


Trust Is Like

by Sorenfitz



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cuddling & Snuggling, Deepthroating, Falling In Love, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Hunk!Josh Dun, Hunk!Tyler Joseph, Kissing, Light Masochism, Light Sadism, M/M, Masochist!Josh Dun, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sadist!Tyler Joseph, Sexual Trauma (not rape), Stories by Johnny Fitz, Trust Issues, biting kink, josh dun is already a hunk but he's hunkier, you get what i mean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:35:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24299698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorenfitz/pseuds/Sorenfitz
Summary: Dear reader, Tyler Joseph is standing over my shoulder right now and trying to pull me off of my chair. Can you please get uot of my fsce? Don’t you dare biteThis is a story about compromise and commitment, and how to do it right. This is the story of how Tyler learned to take it slow for me and how I learned to trust him. This is the story of how our relationship started completely messed up and turned into a bond that will never break. This is a story of my first, worst date and Tyler's first, last virgin.Or,How a Sadist and a Masochist Can Have a Completely Wholesome Relationship
Relationships: Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph
Kudos: 9





	1. Chapter One, Part One: Trust Is Like... Being Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler and I find each other—again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a college AU. I've done as well as I could to match their dialogue to their personalities in the videos I watched (so many videos...) but I'd appreciate any feedback or suggested edits you may have for their dialogue or Josh's voice as a narrator.

_Dear reader,_

_Tomorrow morning, I’m going to wake up with fresh bruises. My ass really hurts. Please send help._

_Josh Dun_

_Dear reader,_

_I’ve been sitting at this computer for five minutes trying to come up with the first line of this story and my boyfriend already wants me to get in bed with him. Please send help._

_Josh Dun_

_Dear reader,_

_Tyler Joseph is standing over my shoulder right now and trying to pull me off of my chair. Can you please get uot of my fsce? Don’t you dare bite_

_Dear reader,_

_I am having difficulty sitting down. Don’t send help. It’s just my boyfriend._

_Josh Dun_

Unfortunately, you don’t get to hear the raunchy details of how Tyler Joseph got under the shirt I deliberately refused to take off and bit my shoulder until I _actually_ wanted to get off the computer and rut him. Maybe I’ll write an epilogue. 

Loving Tyler Joseph takes a lot of work. 

The story you’re about to read is a record of the work it took so that we could love each other. Sometimes, I look back at the beginning of our relationship bitterly, imagining that I was the only one who really cared or made any effort whatsoever—but I hope that, by writing this down, I’ll never forget that love was—and always will be—a two way street, and that Tyler loves me as much as I love him. 

* 

The morning of my first college debate tournament, I woke up the same way I had every day for the previous two months—raising one hand to my shoulder to feel gingerly for a bruise. It wasn’t there, of course—I had stopped feeling it six weeks ago, and five weeks ago it had disappeared entirely. I reached for the memory of how it felt every morning, but it’s hard to remember pain. Instead, I always latched onto the memory of how I got it. 

_Tyler leaned over my back, his weight resting over my elbows and knees as he pressed into me from behind. His mouth was no longer near my ear, whispering sweet nothings. His lips were on my shoulder, his teeth grazing the skin. They closed around my flesh. Tyler wanted me to tell him when he was hurting me. I told him._

Most days, I found it hard to speak for the next thirty minutes or so. 

I rolled out of bed, stumbled over to my drawer, and slipped on some boxers. I forget when it happened, but I had started sleeping naked. I shouldn’t have—it just reminded me, every night, of his touch as we drifted to sleep that first night; every morning, of how much I craved that touch. But I wanted to remember it. I couldn’t let him go. 

But I couldn’t bring myself to text him, either.

I drank some water and then, to wake myself up, I went to the emptiest part of my dorm room—I lived in a single, with soft carpets and blue walls—and started to shadowbox, punching the air as if I were in the ring, my toned body rippling as I turned and twisted, punched and danced on light feet, getting into the moment and working up energy until the grogginess was expelled.

Ten minutes later, I pulled on grey sweatpants—winter was on its way—and sat in my desk chair with a slump. I opened my laptop and navigated to my notes on debate so I could get some more practice before the tournament. Though my eyes slid down the words on the page, my attention did not. I tried to read the news instead—it was always good to get a handle on hot topics in politics before a tournament. But I couldn’t focus on that, either. 

Today was worse than most days, and not for no reason. Today was not only the day of my first college debate tournament; it was also the day of Tyler’s first home swim meet this year. And I had decided to go and see it. It was only to be expected that I pined harder than ever. I had not caught a single glimpse of Tyler since our first date—I didn’t know his classes, when he worked out, anything at all, and he didn’t know anything about my schedule, either. But today—today, of all days, I knew where he would be. 

I turned my chair squeakily around—it wasn’t a swivel chair—to look at the paper on the wall. Written on it were his number—a number I did not have on my phone—and, in big letters, a haiku. Tyler Joseph—a sadistic jock who confessed that he was not very smart—apparently had a golden heart and a penchant for wordplay. I mouthed the words as I read them. 

_I gave and mistook_

_All_ _I_ _wanted. Forgive me,_

_My first first, my last._

I had tried analysing it a dozen times, trying to figure out what he meant by this word or that, reaching deeper into his heart. He had insisted that my time with him was my “first”—even though I had hooked up in high school—and I always wondered whether he was being self-aware when he wrote “My first first” or if he still wanted to force that label on me. Perhaps it was an admission of both. 

My mind was running off again. The only one who could ever explain that haiku was Tyler Joseph, and who knew if even Tyler could do that? 

He had left this for me the morning after our date, and that was the last I had heard of him. By giving me his number, he had put himself on my leash. After what he had done to me, I thought, he deserved to be at the end of one. But as much as I wanted to drag him back on it—I could not bring myself to do it. It was foolish, but I wanted to know he missed me as much as I missed him. And—though he knew where my dorm room was—he had never come. 

I think it was better for both of us that he didn’t. I didn’t want Tyler to come visit me in private, for the quiet of my room to tempt us with another night of love-smothering sex. But it didn’t stop me wanting him. 

The swim meet started a couple of hours before lunch, so I ate cereal, distracted myself with music, and eventually worked up the motivation to read the news carefully before I left. I walked out of my room in a grey hoodie and black jeans, covering my red-dyed hair. I wanted to see him—but part of me didn’t want him to see me. At the swim meet, I weaved through crowds, trying to see through heads without pushing through to the front. 

I had looked at the listings the day before; I knew where he _should_ have been, but he was nowhere I could see, he and his dopey smile and wide, optimistic eyes, he and his gorgeously lean body that I just wanted to remember. I waffled about asking a coach where he was—what if the coach passed on to Tyler that I’d been looking for him? But if I didn’t give him my name, if I kept my hoodie on, I thought it would be fine. 

Besides, my hair had been dyed blue when we had our date. Now it was red. I asked a coach, and he said that Tyler had fallen ill the previous evening and was recovering—and that everyone was very sad, and many people had asked, because Tyler was quite good, apparently. I gave an approving nod for Tyler’ skill, wishing that I could give that nod to Tyler directly, and walked away absently, pining. 

When I returned to my room, I plugged his number into my contacts: “Tyler Joseph” with the blushing emoji at the end. I could afford to be a little bit cheesy. I had lunch at the cafeteria with the debate team, sitting next to my best friend and debate partner, Chris. I was staring out into the distance, and when he asked quietly if I was in love, I vehemently denied it. But I had iMessage open to his contact with the keyboard open and nothing written, and he knew the moment he saw it. 

He reminded me to focus, and I told him that I would, for his sake. The moment I got involved in the conversation at the table, I forgot all about Tyler—at least for a while. I hardly even thought about him on the way back to my room, not when I was listening to NPR to practice absorbing information quickly or when I was changing into my slacks, my white, striped button-down, and a red bow tie to match my hair. I smiled at myself in the mirror and then hurried out to meet the team in our prep room, thinking about debate and debate alone. 

Then Tyler Joseph showed up at my first round. 

To my eyes, a nondescript somebody in a hoodie showed up, who refused to look up when all the competitors in round entered the room. I eyed the newcomer for a moment and then forgot about it; perhaps he was an auditor, or a reporter from some magazine. This was my first round, and I was determined to get as many points for speaking as I could—it wasn’t _exactly_ public speaking, I had told myself, and I was going to get this right for my friend. 

It worked for the first four minutes of my first speech. I thought I was speaking so well, articulating my points with as clear a voice as I could, chasing out the little slur in my usual voice that I had always worried was ineloquent. But the judge looked at me so blankly as he took down his notes that I started to lose myself, slow down, and slur— 

And then Tyler looked up at me with a smile and the eyes I had never forgotten. I wasn’t assaulted by any old memories, but I had just been given a new one, and the wonder of the present chased away the past. My mind was already scrambled, and my speech came to a halt, but he gave a little nod that seemed to set everything right. I smiled at Tyler and the judge, said, “Excuse me, but I’d like to go back and review this advantage...” 

For Tyler, I realised, I wanted to be the best I could be. I wanted to see him smile. 

After my last speech, he hurried out of the room, giving me a smile along the way that made my heart beat faster than anything any judge said all day. I almost forgot to smile back. My partner, Chris, made no note of it, probably because he liked the resurgence of my articulation. But Tyler came to watch each of my rounds, slipping in just before the round started or with the opposition so I couldn’t get a word in. 

Every time I started to falter, he looked up at me with that nod and that smile, and like magic, I caught a second wind of confidence and kept on with my arguments. Eventually, I hardly faltered during a round at all—simply knowing that he was there, looking down in the corner and listening so carefully that he knew when I was having trouble, helped me to focus on what I was doing. I was able to focus on the judge, just like I ought—to deliver my points to him, not to my paper or to the walls of the room, and I sunk into the game and sought to win it. 

The day wasn’t _perfect,_ as much as I wanted it to be. Despite my neat clothing, I thought I looked terribly unprofessional as the only one in the room with a phone for a timer, and I said as much to my partner a few times. I was still learning how to use my last speech well and how to think fast on the defensive, and I think we lost a few rounds on that account. But I was giddy, anyway—my heart may have beat like I was nervous, but the nervousness in my head had drained away when Tyler was there, and my delivery had been unimpeded by fear or uncertainty. 

Love was a gift, I decided, forgetting that love was the reason I couldn’t speak for half an hour every morning and that I shivered naked in my bed when my blankets needed a wash. It’s more accurate to say that love is a rollercoaster, like the rest of life: for it was good, so good, to see Tyler sitting there when all I had had for two months was memories, but it hurt that he didn’t say a word. It filled my heart to bursting that he had come to my debate tournament without provocation and that he hadn’t tried to drag me into anything, but part of my heart felt empty because I missed his voice. Every time he left the room before I could talk to him, it was like a piece of my heart was being ripped out of my chest—and every time he re-entered, it felt like everything was right with the world. 

Perhaps this sounds overly romantic. But, sometimes, that’s love. 

“Did you see the way that guy looked at you?” Chris asked, as we walked away from our last qualifying round. 

I looked at Chris and cocked my head. “He smiled at me a couple of times,” I said. 

“Yeah, but once you started focusing on the judge, he kept sending glances your way.” 

“Probably imagining me naked,” I muttered, darkly, and Chris stopped in his tracks. 

“Huh? Why would you think that?” Chris asked. “He looked at you like... like you were the light of his life. He looked like he was... uh, I don’t know, something romantic. Like he was lost in your eyes. Like when you’re watching a hummingbird or a butterfly.” Chris was a bit of a nature freak. 

“Really?” I asked, quietly. We were stopping traffic, so I tugged on his arm to pull him with me. “He never looked at me that way before.” During our first date, his eyes had lingered on me like I was gorgeous—and like he wanted to eat me for dessert. 

“He never... _Oh_ ,” Chris said, stopping me in my tracks again and grinning at me. “Is that the Tyler guy? I think he’s in love with you. You better not leave him hanging for long, dude. You want somebody who looks at you like that.” 

I shook my head quickly. “We had one date. He didn’t love me. He just wanted to... uh, do things to me. You don’t want to hear the details, dude; I know you’re straight.” 

“You must not have been talking to him for a while, then,” Chris said, with a shrug. “Things obviously changed for him.” 

That had me quiet for a long time. That Tyler could look at me as more than a piece of meat—I suddenly felt like it had been foolish to think he ever saw me that way. Why else would he give me his number and not ask for mine? Why else put himself at my mercy? Why else would he write a haiku for me to say sorry? Maybe he wasn’t in love with me, then, but maybe there was still a spark of care. And, despite our distance, something had set it ablaze. 

Chris and I didn’t qualify for the elimination rounds. We had only won two of our six. But that was okay—we helped the rest of the team plan their rounds and watched them as they clawed their way toward the top of the ranks. We had a great team, and we were becoming more of a family every week. I was proud to be a part of it. 

During the awards ceremony at the end of the day, they gave awards to the best three novice speakers in the qualifying rounds and announced the three runner-ups—I was fourth place. My team was on me in a moment, and the high after the ceremony seemed like it lasted all night. The only thing that could have gotten me down was the fact that the three award-winners had gotten those classic, professional timers I wanted so bad, and that I was one place away from getting one myself. 

When I went to bed, I did so naked—but I barely remembered why. I was thinking about how I could improve at debate, what I could learn with Chris, how well I would do in the next tournament, and—Tyler’s smile. I fell asleep to the memory of Tyler’s smile. 

I forgot to text him. 

* 

For a long time after we finally made up, I wondered if it had just been a coincidence that he had been sick that day. Because he wasn’t at the swim meet to find out I had come, it was like both of us had decided independently to go see each other in the only place we knew we could. There was no excuse to point fingers and say that one had started something the other didn’t want—we had each chosen it for ourselves. But it always felt like too much of a coincidence. 

Eventually, I asked Tyler if he knew why he got sick. He said that, the day before the tournament, he had been so nervous about visiting me that he had come down with a fever. The only coincidence, if that were true, was that both our home events had been on the same day. It didn’t take much work to believe that we had both fallen in love with each other, or that we knew enough about each other to find each other. That day was just a lucky day. But it was a good one. 

* 

When I woke up the next morning, I touched my shoulder and began to relive the old memory—but when it was over, I remembered Tyler nodding at me to keep talking, and I said, “Okay.” It was a good morning. When I got out of bed and put on my boxers and shorts, I still craved his touch, but I didn’t pine quite so badly. I read his haiku with newfound joy, sure at last that it was written with the touch of something more than just guilt, and then I got ready for a run that I had skipped the morning before. 

My door opened inward, so when I opened it and stepped toward the doorframe, wearing short shorts and a tank for my run, I stopped and looked down to see a rose and a little device lying on the floor. I picked up the rose gingerly, so as not to prick myself, and squinted at the device to see that it was a timer—a debate timer, with the name of a tournament on top, not the one I had been to. It could have been from anybody, but—though I’m not a guy for flowers—the rose told me it was from Tyler. 

I ran back into my room and picked up my phone—I had only brought an Apple Watch and some Airpods, so I could listen to some creative drumbeats while I was running—and texted Tyler at that instant: “Thank you.” I added, quickly, “This is Josh.” 

“I figured,” he sent back, after a few moments. I stared at the phone for a while, and as the notification popped up that he was typing, I started typing, too: “I miss you,” I wrote, my finger hovering over the send button. 

He sent his text. It said, “I miss you.” 

I sent mine. 

* 

We texted for the next week, gradually carrying on a conversation between classes and meals. We talked about interests we shared, like gaming and working out, or foods we both enjoyed, or what our favourite things were—I wrote those down for future reference. We didn’t ask each other for anything. I’m sure we both thought often about having another night together, but whenever I got those thoughts I tried to ignore them, and I’m glad we both did. 

His second home swim meet came a week after the first one, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would come. This time, I didn’t need to worry if he would see me or not. I wanted him to hear my voice and know that I was there, but I didn’t want to distract him, either, so I searched online how to cheer properly for swimmers. After I jogged to the meet in sweats and a hoodie, I asked the first coach I saw the same questions, just to be sure. 

I milled through the crowds with my blazing red hair, finding out when Tyler’s first event would be, looking around the pools for him so I could give him a boost beforehand, but he was nowhere to be found until the event started. I saw through the crowds as I pushed to the front; he was standing in his place, looking like he was in the zone, and I hurried to the other end of the pool opposite he and above his lane. There he was, across the way, in those goggles swimmers wore that I tried not to laugh at, in a red Speedo that made me blush—we don’t talk about that—and he looked up. 

I smiled at him and nodded, and he stared back down at the water, his muscles tensed, as the countdown began. He trained so much, I thought, he just had to win—he dove into the water, and I began to cheer his name—he started to pull ahead of some swimmers, close behind others, and I inserted platitudes like “Go!” and “Keep going!” and “Yeah!”—he flipped around at my wall and I cheered even harder as he slipped into fourth place. He had two more laps, and I allowed the frequency of my cheers to decrease, still making sure he heard me. He endured in his place, slowly gaining on third as his runner’s steady pace kept him able and unwearied, but in the final lap, he put on a burst of speed that got him just—into—second place—and he hit the wall and took second. 

I waited until most of the swimmers had taken their places before I started moving back to the front of the pool, where Tyler had taken off his goggles and was beaming. I loved that grin—not a trace of mischief or lechery, just like the smiles he had given me at the beginning of our first date. Grins like that were how I had fallen in love with him in the first place, and they certainly weren’t going to catch my fall, now. 

I came up behind him and squeezed his shoulders. “Tyler!” I said, proudly, letting go as he turned around with a start. “You did it!” 

“You helped, Josh,” he said, with that eager, boyish voice of his. I had missed that voice. “Thanks for cheering me on.” 

“Thank you for actually talking to me,” I said, dryly. “I missed that,” I added, much more sincerely. 

He laughed sheepishly and reached back to scratch his head. His toned arm glistened; water rolled in droplets down his muscle. “I didn’t realise how much I missed yours until your tournament.” 

“Jerk,” I said, punching him in the shoulder. “You listened to me talk for seventy-two minutes and didn’t say a thing!” 

“Hey,” he grumbled, rubbing his arm where I had hit him. _Gosh, his arms are gorgeous,_ I thought, maybe staring a little bit, and then I looked back at his eyes when he continued, “I mean, what if I said something raunchy on accident? I didn’t want you to think I was just there because I was horny for you.” 

I looked at Tyler sceptically. “So you’re _not_ still horny for me?” 

“No!” he said, quickly, and I frowned harder. “That’s not what I mean. I mean—yeah, I wanna bite that smile right off your cute face,” he said, with a suddenly devious tone that I remembered well, and he continued, more casually, “and you’re the cutest guy I’ve ever met. But... your smile is beautiful,” he said, a little breathlessly. “And I love hearing you. You always have this little smile in your voice when you’re up there, and it just makes me want to listen. And your red hair is such a good look on you—you’re always so bold and confident and—” 

I raised a hand. My face was red as a beet. “Stop—you don’t have to—” 

He kept going. “So yeah, maybe I _am_ still hot for you, but—besides that—I’ve never felt this way before. So _please_ don’t take it wrong if I joke about rutting you ‘til you cry, or—” 

“Stop—I won’t!” I said, louder than I should have. One of the swimmers looked at me disapprovingly and then turned around when I glared. “You’re allowed to be in...” I hesitated before continuing, “in love, and still want my body.” 

He was silent for a few moments after that, and I don’t know if it was because I said the word “love” or because he was wrestling with what I said. 

“I do, too,” I said, eventually. I gestured across his torso. “You look beautiful this way. I want to hold you. I just... have a lot of memories. Of you. Like this. I want to replace them, first.” 

“Replace them?” Tyler asked, giving me another mischievous grin. “What, like when you were kneeling in front of me? When I was pinning you down? When I was cramming it down your—” 

“Tyler,” I hissed, through gritted teeth. 

“Why would you want to forget our first date?” he asked, quietly. 

“I—I don’t know. Look, I don’t want to talk about this right now.” I stepped back and he put up his hands in surrender. 

“Then we won’t.” My mouth dropped open. He was actually _listening_ to me. “Let’s just keep hanging out. We can forget about the date for now. But Josh—” he reached out and grabbed both my shoulders, stepping closer to me— “I don’t want to be just friends with you.” I started, but he didn’t let me go. “You’re in love with me. You said so yourself. Well, I—“ 

He stopped. “What?” I asked. 

“I think there was a spark, or I would never have gone to your tournament,” he said. “But, watching you up there at the podium… Josh, I fell in love with you more every speech. I love you, Josh.” 

* 

They say distance makes the heart grow fonder. But maybe you’re thinking, “Josh, this is happening way too fast,” or, “It can’t be that easy. That’s unrealistic.” If this was a story of how Tyler and I fell in love, then maybe it would be. Or, maybe, the story wouldn’t even be worth writing. But I think Tyler and I were shackled to each other the moment we met eyes in that coffee shop. (I’ll tell you later.) 

So, this isn’t the end of this story, because this isn’t a story about how we fell in love. It’s a story of how we got up and kept on walking in it. That’s where the twists and turns come in. That’s why, when I sleep with Tyler at the end of this chapter, it’s going to be in boxers, for the first time in two months. Read on and find out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of these chapters will have two parts—like this one—so their length doesn't cripple the reader. I've tried to split at convenient spots, and to make the transitions less jarring.
> 
> You won't see the first date until the third chapter. If anything so far hasn't made sense because you're missing information, please let me know and I'll try and edit those sections! My goal is to polish this work as much as possible by the time it's complete, but I don't have any dedicated editors.


	2. Chapter One, Part Two: Trust Is Like... Being Boyfriends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler and I start to relearn each other.
> 
> No, Tyler, just because I'm writing the chapter summary doesn't mean you can jump me—

“I love you, Josh,” said Tyler, and my heart dropped out of my chest. It was one thing to say that I thought he loved me, but it was another altogether to hear it confirmed. He loved me, and I loved him. “And you love me. So I don’t just want to be your friend.” 

“Then what?” I asked, shakily. “Tell me.” 

“Boyfriends,” he said, and I stiffened up. 

“Tyler, you know what I said—I want to take things slow,” I said. 

“We can,” he said, forcefully, squeezing my shoulders. “Boyfriend can mean whatever we want it to. But it can’t just be friends. We’re not just friends.” 

I shook my head. “And why aren’t we? Because we had—a fling?” I whispered, trying to be discreet. We had drifted away from the poolside, but we were still in a public place. 

“No,” he hissed. “That would just make us friends with benefits. I don’t want that.” 

“Then why?” I asked. But I knew. He said it. 

“Because my heart beats faster when I’m around you. Because I want to touch you, not so I can get off, but just because I can. Right now, holding you like this, it’s like everything is right, even though I know it isn’t. I want to give you everything. I want to know all of you. And if you do, too, then we’re not just friends.” 

I didn’t say anything. He was right. I felt the same way. My hands drifted toward his sides and held them, right between his ribs and his hips. 

“Can I call you my boyfriend?” he asked, quietly. 

“If we’re not going to hide it…” I said, running my hands up his sides and back down again. “It’s what we are. You said it yourself.” A pair of parents looked at us with narrowed eyes, but I barely noticed. Jordan had taught me to stop caring long ago. 

“Then I will.” 

“I love you, Tyler,” I whispered, and he leaned in and gave me a kiss—the most chaste and most innocent kiss he had ever given me. His lips touched mine and—with obvious effort—he pulled away, his face red. 

“I have to go do warm-up laps for my next race,” he said, as he walked slowly backward and my hands slid off of his sides. “I’ll talk to you soon, Josh!” 

I watched him turn around and walk briskly away, my hands dripping wet from his skin. The last time they had been wet in his presence, it was because he had painted me in his essence four times that night and there was nowhere left to wipe it off. Against my will, I relived the memory of the first time he had gone off over my body—and then I wandered to the bleachers and sat down, remembering his hands on my shoulders just now, instead. 

* 

I cheered my new, old boyfriend through his next couple of races, thinking about what it meant for us to have our new name. I really did want to take it slow—I always had—and right now, I had to trust that he would do that for me. It was with that trust—and the sudden, inexplicable desire to tell the world we loved each other—that I gave him what he wanted. My fear—one of them, at least—was that, for Tyler, the word “boyfriend” meant we had to have sex with each other, right away. It had seemed like that was all he had wanted, during our first date. But that kiss said otherwise. It told me I could trust him to listen and to wait—at least, for a little bit. 

But I wanted to hold him so bad, and I knew he wanted to hold me, too. I didn’t want to keep him at a distance, but—during our first date, every time I gave him an inch, he took a mile. But the kiss—I gave him an inch, and an inch was all he took. So, perhaps, just maybe, I could learn to trust him—little by little. 

We talked more between his rounds, about other competitors, about how he trained, about his team, and so on. We didn’t think to say a word about such things as “what comes next”. We just wanted to be with each other. He held my hand or rubbed my back as we walked, and I did much the same, enjoying him with restraint and chastity. His only slips were the innuendo and the risqué implications he couldn’t help but make, but his hand never roved its way any lower than my waist—until I found my way to his ass, which felt amazing underneath Tyler’s speedo, and gave him tacit permission. 

We were in public, so he didn’t use his newfound power very often—that is, until the swim meet finally ended, he led me into the locker room, and squeezed my asscheek once before letting go. “Sorry,” he said, sheepishly. “Couldn’t resist.” 

“I brought it on myself,” I said, grinning back. 

He sat me down on a bench and headed into the shower, chatting me up using the reverberation of the room, even though we couldn’t see each other. I peeked at him as he stepped out of the shower room, saving the memory of his lean, naked body—not as material to which to jack off, but as something which I could use to rewrite the memories of our first date, something else that would be my first image when I thought of “Tyler Joseph naked”. 

He introduced me to his teammates as his boyfriend, Josh Dun, and I found myself blushing every time he did. It felt like the least masculine thing I could do in that moment—but my toned arms and the slightly visible bulk of my chest under my hoodie said otherwise, and his repeated assertions that I trained as a boxer helped my image. They seemed to have no problems with me, so long as I—as one guy said—“don’t go cheating on my boy Tyler.” I assured him, looking at his eyes and not his body, that I wouldn’t dare. 

With Tyler in the room and his new memory in my head, it was surprisingly easy not to linger on any of the swimmers’ bodies. 

Some of them tread carefully around me. I expected that. But, once I started talking with them, most of them seemed to identify me as “one of the guys”. That was how I liked it. When changing was done, everybody wanted to ditch the locker room, so the coach took those who were interested to grab a take-out lunch and bring it to a spacious place that a couple of the guys in the team had rented nearby. 

We sat together in the living room and just chilled out, talking about anything, making dumb jokes, doing crazy tricks and embarrassing capers for the camera. The jokes got a little raunchy—what do you expect? We were boys—and some of them were directed at me and Tyler, but we always joked back and kept the banter going. It was nice to get to be “one of them”—somehow, their acceptance of Tyler as gay extended to me. It was hardly a point of contention; rather, just another thing to joke about, like Robbie’s red hair or Perrin’s girls or Jack’s entire name. 

This was a good team, I decided, and I was happy I got to enjoy it with my boyfriend. It seemed like they had decided I, too, was good for Tyler. So, at least here, everything was right with the world. 

Neither of us suggested doing anything for the night, so eventually, we had to part—but it was slow, gradual, and reluctant. We hardly wanted to go in different cars, but I had to hitch a ride with a freshman who was driving the five minutes back to his dorm on campus. We didn’t say much, but he said that he thought it was cool I boxed, and that I was a good match for Tyler. He didn’t seem reluctant to say it, but the words came out of his mouth slowly, as if he were adjusting to the idea. I thought I understood, and I told him I appreciated it as he let me out of his car and drove away. 

I walked up to my room feeling warm—and somehow empty. The memory of Tyler filled me, but I felt incomplete without him. I read his haiku, thinking about the way it felt when we held hands, remembering his hand on my back. But I slept naked, anyway, craving his touch. 

* 

We started sharing lunch and dinner together at the cafeteria. Sometimes we would sit alone and just enjoy each other’s presence as while we ate—but it was way easier to start making raunchy jokes about each other, and once Tyler started, he found it hard to stop. 

But we would also hang with each other’s crowds. I started sitting with Tyler and his swim team as they, like I, ate like horses to satisfy our calorie-heavy lifestyles, and we would find ways to talk with our mouths full and laugh until we choked. When I introduced Tyler to my debate team for the first time, I called him my boyfriend—to his grin and Chris’s smile—and though the team was half girls who were a little more prim, they were used to my eating habits and didn’t complain about Tyler’s. 

Over the next two weeks, we became staples of each other’s lifestyles—at least, during lunch and dinner. Almost all of his swim team was more than happy to have me at the table with them, although they complained as one that I stole him away to hang out with “those nerds on the debate team”. But the debate team thought and said much the same, in the other direction, and we had more than one good laugh about it when we sat alone. 

At the end of the first week, we decided to sign up for a video game tournament that was happening in two weeks—team-based Smash, a joke about which he made the moment we walked away from the sign-up table in the cafeteria. We started to spend our evenings in one’s room or the other’s, practising our teamwork and coordination, enjoying each other’s presence. But we never went any farther than to sit side by side; we always parted with gentle touches and kisses, leaving me frustrated, naked, and needy in my bed, but always worried about asking him to sleep with me, worried what he would take from me if I did. 

_Why can’t I trust him?_ I would ask myself. I couldn’t take that step further, always fearful that he would stop listening and just take and take until I was spent and drained and empty in all the wrong ways. But I couldn’t bring myself to talk about it with him. Every evening, I pined as he left, wondering when things would change. 

Monday of the second week of our relationship—after we had signed up for the video game tournament—Tyler asked if he could come to my next debate tournament. We were driving a few hours away into a nearby state; I knew there would be room in a car for him, but I said that we had already booked the rooms. He promised he could bring a sleeping bag and sleep on the floor, and that he would pay for his own meals—he just wanted to cheer me on—so I asked our coach. 

The coach had eaten with us multiple times over the last week, and he knew Tyler well enough, so—surprisingly, even still—he was chill with it. He warned that Tyler would have to sneak up to the room and hide his sleeping bag during the day, because the charge for the room depended on how many people were sleeping in it, and the maids might notice. But he said he would even pay for some of Tyler’s meals if he felt like it. It was a good deal, so I took it gladly and let Tyler know. 

We could hardly wait for the trip out of state; we hoped it was going to be amazing. Friday afternoon came, and with our bags packed for two nights, we hopped in our cars and started on our way. The drivers were all coaches or judges that the coaches had brought along, and they had some drills prepared for us. Tyler joined in briefly, but he didn’t think he was very good at it, and he just chimed in when we were all talking as friends. 

We all made it safely to the hotel after a break for dinner, and they told us our rooms. Tyler was to stay in the car, but we were to bring up his bags, and then I’d go down with my keycard and bring him up through the back ways. Thanks to some reshuffling and a team member who had to drop due to sickness, it ended up being Tyler, Chris, and me in a room. 

I got Tyler inside with his sleeping bag and backpack, and he started setting up the bag, even though there was space on the bed for the two of us. “Tyler!” I asked. “What are you doing?” 

“I brought this sleeping bag for a reason, and I’m going to use it,” he said, with a grin. “Why?” 

“Because you could…” My mouth stopped working. He looked at me innocently. “… sleep with Chris?” 

“Nope,” Chris said, with an air of finality. 

“I could sleep with Chris, and you could sleep on my bed?” I suggested. 

“Still nope,” said Chris, looking at me wryly. What was he doing? 

“That wouldn’t even be fair,” Tyler pointed out, and he went back to setting up his sleeping bag. The only other option was for Tyler to sleep in my bed—but he wasn’t going to ask me for it. For a moment, I felt aggravated that he was making me ask him, and then I realised with sudden warmth in my heart that he wanted to know what I was comfortable with before he did anything. 

This was the moment of truth. If I couldn’t take the step forward and trust him now, would I ever be able to believe I could trust him? I sat on the bed and thought silently, warring with myself about what I should do, whether I believed Tyler would wait and listen or just take and take and take. 

I was looking away from Chris and Tyler, on the far bed from the door. I opened my mouth—and Tyler said, “I’m going to go down to the gym and run on the treadmill. I’ll see you guys later.” 

I kept working my mouth quietly as he left. 

“What’s going on with you two?” Chris asked, and I kicked off my shoes turned around to look at him. 

“What do you mean?” I asked. “There’s nothing wrong.” 

Chris paused and seemed to think. “You didn’t suggest that he sleep on the bed with you.” 

“He didn’t suggest it, either,” I pointed out, helplessly. 

“I don’t know, I always thought cuddling was a staple of any romantic relationship,” Chris said, with a grin. “Aren’t you guys boyfriends?” 

“Yeah,” I said, and I added, through gritted teeth, “in an early stage of our relationship.” 

Chris shrugged. “Makes sense to me. But it sounds like you two need some space to work things out.” 

“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe. We’re fine. Anyway, I’m going to tell him he can sleep on the bed with me when he comes back up. But I’m gonna do some shadowboxing,” I said, starting to move some chairs around to leave a wider open space for me to turn in. 

As I did so, Chris asked me, “Are you going to sleep naked?” 

I thought about that question the rest of the workout. 

When I was finished, I took a quick shower to cool off, and a couple of minutes later Tyler came up and did the same. I was sitting on the side of the bed facing the door and Tyler’s sleeping bag between the beds. It was getting late, so he made to get into his sleeping bag, but I asked, “Tyler, do you want to sleep on my bed?” 

He gave me the biggest, widest, most genuine smile I had seen from anyone in a while. “I would love to, Josh.” He stood up and I flinched, suddenly imagining him tackling me into the bed—but he just leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead before moving around to sit on the other side of the bed. 

I got out of my clothes, but I left on my dark blue boxers as I slipped into the bed. I told myself I would take them off when it was time to sleep, but for now I was just going to look at my phone absently and read a book. Tyler left his boxers on, too, I tried not to notice, even though my eyes drifted all over his body on reflex. He noticed, grinned, and flexed his biceps for me, and I groaned, but I wasn’t exactly displeased. 

“Get a room,” Chris said, dryly, and then he turned off the last light. 

Tyler got into the bed, lying on his back on his set of pillows. I imagined I could feel the hints of his warmth radiating across the space between us, but I feared to close the gap—still, I found myself moving slightly to the side, closer to Tyler, and when I did, he did, too—seemingly absently, as he looked at his phone. 

“Could you put my phone on the desk next to you?” he asked, eventually, and I took it from him as he asked and put it on the cabinet. I put mine down, too. He reached out and ran his hand through my hair, rubbing my head gently, and as I drifted to sleep, I forgot to take off my boxers. 

* 

I woke up with Tyler’s arm next to mine. He was on his face, breathing into the bed. I enjoyed the touch of our skin for a few moments before getting up, heading to the shower, and dressing myself in black slacks and a light blue button-down with a matching tie. We all ate breakfast quickly and hurried off to the tournament. 

Tyler sat in the prep room with us, helping to do research—we were given our topics and positions in a debate only twenty minutes before each round, and we had to prepare our arguments quickly, so the more hands, the better. He quietly followed Chris and me to every round, wearing a hoodie and a smile and—blessedly—not interrupting our pre-round discussions. Just as he had before, he nodded me through every halt and falter, smiled at me to raise my confidence, even smiled at Chris once or twice—I wasn’t jealous, I told myself—and I’d like to think he helped carry us to victory four times out of six in the qualifying rounds. 

Four wins out of six rounds was enough to get us into the elimination rounds, and we took our dinner while high on victory. Tyler doted on me the whole way through, feeding me, kissing me, telling me I’d been amazing, squeezing my shoulders, rubbing my back—in those moments, I felt like I’d never have to crave his touch again. He was _right there_. 

It was difficult to let go of the emptiness whenever his touch left me—but I figured that was necessary to maintain a healthy relationship. It was impossible to hold each other all day, every day, anyway, and I contented myself in knowing that he was there, or that he had missed me in the past and would miss me again—that we loved each other. It was the most wonderful thing, to know that. 

We got through one elimination round in the novice bracket before we all went back to our hotel, and the tournament was poorly organised enough that they couldn’t tell us who had won or lost before everything shut down for the day. We returned to our rooms all biting our nails, pent up with stress and tension and needing an outlet to release it. Tyler said he was going to do some sprints on the treadmill and I said I would come with him and shadowbox—at the time, for us, much better methods of coping with energy than fucking each other into a sweaty mess. (At the time.) 

We returned to the room sweaty and worn out, heavily considering showering together and deciding quite emphatically against it. We waffled about who should go first until Chris sent me packing into the shower and made Tyler throw in new boxers after me. When Tyler’s face lingered through the doorframe, I shooed him away and he pouted at me as he shut the door ever so slowly. 

When it was his turn to shower, he brought his boxers to the bathroom door and left them outside. “I need you to bring my boxers in,” he said, through the door, and I could just hear his voice. “And you can peek if you want.” I grumbled at him, opened the door to see him and his stupid hunky body facing away from me—gosh, I loved his butt—and I may or may not have stared until he started turning around. I flung the briefs at his face and slammed the door with hot cheeks. 

He came out fresh, dried up and in boxers that—as always—bulged gently with his prodigious endowment. Oh, I had memories of that endowment, memories a-plenty, and I tried not to get hard over them as I wandered onto the bed and sat down. Chris got up at the same time, holding his backpack and saying, “I’m sleeping in Tad’s room tonight.” 

Tyler froze, and I stiffened up. That would leave us— 

“So you two can be alone together,” he added, wryly. “I did say you needed to get a room. So here’s a room.” He started to walk to the door and I blanched, getting up quickly and opening my mouth to speak—but he left the room and shut the door, deliberately dropping his keycard inside the room as he did. 

I sat down hard, and suddenly it was like an immense weight fell off my back. Tyler looked at me with wide eyes, and I returned the glance with a tired smile. 

“Can we—” he started. 

“Do you want to—” I said, at the same time, and we both finished with the question: “cuddle?” 

We both burst out laughing at the absurdity of the question. _What kind of couple has to ask permission of each other to cuddle?_ I asked myself, though—as you can see—Tyler and I were clearly the type. 

“Of course I want to,” Tyler gasped out. “I just didn’t know if you were... if you felt... ready.” 

“Thank you for waiting so long,” I said, as I calmed down and flopped back on the bed. “I’m sorry. I’m just still trying to figure out how to— how to—” I paused. 

“Trust me?” Tyler asked, and I nodded, sitting back up. “I understand, Josh. I don’t want to make you go too far. I did that enough... then.” Our first date. “But, can I—can I ask you for things?” he said. “I mean—without you feeling like you have to do it, just because I want it. I’ll ask, and you can always say no.” 

I paused. Until he had said “Can we—” a few moments before, the only thing he had asked was for me to call him my boyfriend. He hadn’t asked me to take any steps further, not once in the last two weeks. I thought he deserved to be able to ask. “Yes,” I said. “I want to know what you want. Tyler, gosh, I want to give it to you. Everything. Just like—” I tripped over the next words, and he flinched at them— “that night. But I want to take it slowly, Tyler.” 

“Slowly,” he repeated, taking a small step toward my bed. 

“Not that slowly,” I said, with a grin, beckoning him forward with a hand. I lay back on the bed and he lay next to me with a thump, bringing one hand up to my shoulder to squeeze it. Both of us were in boxers alone, everything else bare, and it was so easy to slip my hand up his side and onto his stomach, to rub it softly and to feel the firm little bumps that formed his abs. 

“I missed your touch,” I whispered. “Did you know, I slept naked every night after our first date? Even when it was cold. Because I missed you.” I laughed nervously. 

“I haven’t touched another guy’s body in over two months,” Tyler said, in return, his voice far away. “I kept Grindr for a few more days afterwards, but I just... couldn’t bring myself to look at the app anymore. I just wanted you.” His hand drifted down my shoulder, caressing my biceps gently, absently, and eventually squeezing my hand. He turned his head to kiss my cheek. I turned on my side and reached behind his head to keep him close—and then I kissed him on the lips. 

This kiss wasn’t exactly chaste, but it wasn’t quite sexual, either. We just savoured each other. His lips worked into mine; my teeth grazed his lips; his tongue slipped into my mouth and ran across my freshly brushed teeth and gums; my tongue danced with his and took over. We separated slowly, a string of saliva connecting our lips as we smiled. I saved the memory of that kiss as thoroughly as I could, but I couldn’t resist saying, “It’s a better first kiss than when you tongue-fucked me.” 

“Hey, that was a good kiss,” he said, grumpily. “Just because I didn’t let you have my mouth. Greedy. If I had a long enough tongue I’d give you a _real_ tongue-fucking,” he added, with a grin, and then he paled. “You’re gonna get me hard.” 

“You’re gonna get yourself hard,” I shot back. “I can be big spoon while you calm down,” I continued, wryly, tugging him up higher onto the bed and then shifting around until I got myself under the covers. He grumbled unintelligibly and got under the covers, himself, but he turned to face the far wall and I came in close. He may have been a couple inches taller than me, but my body fit around his like a glove, my boxers against his, my chest into his back, my lips kissing his neck as I slipped one leg between his. 

I reached my lower hand—the one pinned beneath my side—to his head to rub his hair again as I kissed up and down his neck. My other arm reached around to hug his torso just below his chest, and my kisses drifted down to his shoulder. “I can feel you breathing,” he murmured. “Squeeze me closer, Josh.” I did, his warmth growing more intense against my chest, and I began to nip at his skin with tiny, gentle bites, reaching up to his neck. “Leave me a hickey, baby,” he said, and I began to suck on his skin. 

“Always wanted to ask you for one,” he murmured, as I suckled on his skin and squeezed him and as the seconds passed. “I want to be all yours, Josh. Give you everything. Never leave your side,” he continued, as I let go of his skin and kissed it tenderly. My kisses continued up his neck until I found his ears, and I tugged at his earlobe with my teeth. “You make me feel like I have everything I ever wanted, Josh.” 

I let go of his ear and said, breathlessly, “Turn around, Tyler, let me kiss you.” He did, and I leaned in—and paused. “Do you want to bite my lip?” 

“Do I ever,” he gasped. “Can I make you squirm?” 

I paused. “Until I pull away,” I said, and his eyes sparkled. I kept on leaning in and our lips met again; I worked mine into his and prodded his lips with my tongue. He let me in, but his teeth grazed my tongue and my eyes widened. He laughed into my kiss as I tasted his cheeks gingerly, and his teeth closed in a little harder, but he let go as I pulled back and dove into my mouth. He was obviously determined to keep me in suspense, but that was how I knew I liked it, waiting for his tongue to slip back, wondering when his teeth were going to find my lips. 

His tongue drew back from my mouth and he suckled on my bottom lip, his eyes innocent, betraying nothing—and then his teeth closed gently around my lip and began to grip tighter and tighter. He let go just as I started to moan, pulling back so we could catch our breaths—and then he dove back into the kiss and bit my lip hard, all at once, holding it in a vice grip as I groaned and stiffened up. He looked incredibly pleased at my muffled grunts, and he kept on, giving me no respite from the pain until I finally tugged my head back and he let go. 

My lip stung bad, the ache beating from one edge to the other as my heart beat out of my chest. Yet, somehow—somehow, it felt incomplete. 

“Did you like that?” he asked, eagerly, sounding like an excited little kid. 

“I loved it,” I said, truthfully, but not completely so. His smile tightened a little bit, like he was worried, but the expression disappeared in an instant. 

“Switch sides?” Tyler asked, and I nodded hesitantly. He grinned and—with some reluctance—I turned around, before he pulled me in with one of his strong arms, my boxer-strapped cheeks hugged by his pelvis, so that I could feel his semi-hard bulge pressing into my muscular flesh. But he didn’t even grind; he just held me close, his firm chest radiating heat into my back, the arm around my torso stroking it gently. His lips pressed into my neck and I froze, my muscles tensing as I relived another memory. 

_“You see,” he said, his voice muffled by my rump, “now you’ll never know if I’m about to bite you or kiss you. Every time my mouth gets close to your body, you’ll wonder whether it’ll be my lips, my tongue, or my teeth. It’s the suspense.” His teeth suddenly fell around my untouched buttock, and I moaned—but they didn’t clamp. They were just there, pressing ever so slightly into the skin. My heart started to pound as his teeth closed a little bit tighter… and then they were gone._

“What’s wrong, Josh?” Tyler asked, sounding sincere, and then kissing his way down my neck, reaching my shoulder. I couldn’t speak. 

_“I love it when you squirm, Josh,” he said, his voice a little huskier. “Tell me that it hurts, baby. I wanna know what I’m doing to you.” His lips fell on the new bruise and I whimpered again—but he didn’t bite me. He just sucked on it, ever so softly, the fire of pain trickling away into a dull ache, bliss flowing through the area again._

_“Tyler, that’s so good,” I moaned. “Please, keep—”_

_He growled into my ass and then clamped his teeth around the bruise._

His teeth nipped my shoulder ever so softly, his tongue flicking the spot in a gentle, wet caress, but I squirmed in his grip and he loosened his arm around my torso. “Josh?” 

_“Want you to worry about this mouth,” Tyler said, into my crotch, as he kissed my balls again. “Wanna see you squirm whenever I get close. Gonna give you so many bruises you’ll never forget.” He moved his lips up my cock, kissing it until he got to the tip, and then he licked up the bead of precome forming there. “Would you like that, Josh? All night, wondering when I’m gonna bite you next, where I’m gonna leave the next bruise.”_

“I need to know,” I gasped, pushing him back, away from my body. I turned around, looking into his wide eyes, seeing his gaping mouth. “That you won’t bite me, Tyler, unless I ask.” His mouth worked silently. “I need to know.” 

He paused. “I was going to ask first,” he murmured. “I promise. But—the anticipation, Josh—don’t you want it? Otherwise it’s just pain.” 

“I want that,” I said, quietly, shakily. “But I—I don’t think I can take it. I need control, Tyler,” I said, desperately. “I need to know that you won’t take… more than I give.” 

His eyes widened as if the significance of what I was saying was finally dawning on him. “Josh, I won’t do that—I’m so sorry, I think I understand…” I wanted so badly to ask him what he was saying sorry for, but I didn’t dare. “Are you sure that’s what you want? Control?” 

“I need it, Tyler,” I said. “I know it won’t be as fun, but—I need it.” For a moment, he looked so disappointed that, combined with the memories I’d just relived, I wanted to cry. 

But his frown turned into a smile, however tight it may have been, and he said, “Okay, Josh. No biting until you ask for it.” His upper hand came up to stroke my side gently. His other hand caressed my chin and lifted it so he could give my lips a little peck, and I smiled shakily. “Can I spoon you again?” he asked. 

“Just a few more moments,” I said. “Just need you to hold me.” 

He held me as tenderly as he ever had, for what felt like an eternity—and then, at last, I turned around and leaned into him once again, relishing in his body around mine, the intimacy of the touch and the chasteness of his hands. He started to kiss my neck again, little peppered kisses without a hint of teeth or longer kisses accompanied by a playful tongue batting at my skin. 

His kisses drifted down to my shoulder as I reached back with my upper hand and found his muscular bottom. I started to massage his rump gently, kneading it with my fingers or caressing it with my palms, even through the fabric of his boxers. 

“Are nips okay?” he asked, and I answered in the affirmative. I stiffened for a little bit the first time his teeth tugged at the skin of my neck, but it was so gentle and so kind that I couldn’t help but relax. Without the fear, without the anticipation, perhaps I could rewrite the memories of old. Perhaps I could remake them, better. But I just couldn’t give myself to Tyler in that way—not yet. 

His kisses drifted up my cheek and he began to nibble on my earlobe, ever so gently, making my heart warm. Tentatively, I asked, “Can you bite me there? And tug? Until I say stop?” 

His nibbles ceased. “Yes,” he murmured, into my ear, and I held my breath for a few moments as his hot breath drifted across my earlobe—and then he bit the side of it, just above my plug. I began to whine softly in the pain, and then groan and squirm gently as he tugged—and then I asked him to stop, and he let go right away. 

It was not fun. I didn’t ask for it again for a few more minutes, because it was just me asking for pain, and I’d discovered that it wasn’t pain alone I wanted. It was something else—something I wasn’t willing to let myself have. I eventually asked him to bite my shoulder, and he did so reluctantly, and I asked him to let go after only a few seconds. To have that control—it deadened the experience. 

We came to a mutual understanding that there would be no more biting that night. There were nips and kisses and long nibbles; I let him give me a hidden hickey or two on my shoulder; I peppered his neck in them at his behest; we kissed each other again and again, each kiss more chaste as we got tired; we switched sides and held each other tenderly in every which way—until, at last, I drifted off to sleep in his loving arms, my craving for his touch satisfied. 

There was a new craving, instead—a craving and a fear: to be his. 

* 

We woke up to my alarm, side by side, my arm slung over his chest. He gripped my sides and rolled in to caress my body with his. He had a bad case of morning wood, and it stuck out of his boxers, so I could feel five or more inches of his hot, hard flesh pressing into my back, but not quite moving. “Morning, babe,” he murmured. One of his hands went up clumsily to feel my cheeks—they were as hot as a furnace. He laughed quietly. “Wish we could grind until I could paint you, Josh,” he said, making my cheeks even hotter. “You’d look so nice all whitewashed.” He nuzzled my red hair with his nose. “Paint this hair white, give you a face mask and a new coat…” 

I ground my back into his erection with no small embarrassment. I was hard, now, too. 

“Pity,” he said, wryly. “Takes me so long to come. We’d never get done in time.” 

I groaned, and he laughed again. “Shower together?” I asked. 

“Shower together,” he said, happily. We had to restrain ourselves not to touch each other’s dicks for any longer than it took to clean them. 

Chris and I had won our last round the day before, and we went into our next one eagerly, but we lost it, unfortunately, and fell out of the novice elimination rounds—but we had _made it_. Some of our other teams made it much farther, and our lunch and dinner were full of celebration, our drive back home light-hearted, rowdy, and unburdened. We got home late Sunday night, parting reluctantly, and part of me hoped that Tyler and I would stay together in our rooms—but he never mentioned the idea. He said he had to go to his own room, and that was that. 

But when I woke up the next morning, a note was slipped under my door. It was another haiku. 

_You hold my heart. I—_

_I’ll give all, chasten my want._

_I am on your leash._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if the transition was jarring, and again if there's any confusing bits, since you don't have the first date to work with! General feedback on voice, narrative, or character development would be great.
> 
> Already working on the second chapter, and in fact I'm over half done. If itgoes well I'll have it out by the end of the week!


	3. Chapter Two, Part One: Trust Is Like... Being a Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler and I interrogate each other, and attempt to win a video game tournament.
> 
> I know you're watching me type, Tyler; and it was totally your fault. Don't you dare

_You hold my heart. I—_

_I’ll give all, chasten my want._

_I am on your leash._

I studied Tyler’s haiku for a couple of minutes before I took a picture—I still had class to get ready for. Gingerly, I put it on the wall with his other haiku, the one he had given me on our first date. I thought about it long as I took my run, took my shower, ate my breakfast, and walked off to my first class of the day, wondering what each word meant. 

I knew why he wrote “I—”. It was hard, what he was doing. I knew he must have had such difficulty restraining himself, when I was so close to him, so vulnerable—but he did it anyway. “Chasten my want,” he said, and he had been doing it for two months. I had made him wait so long, and here he was waiting longer. It was up to me, and he understood that. I appreciated that. 

I thought fondly about the interplay between “I’ll give all” and “chasten my want”—he seemed aware that, to him, “give all” could mean something than it meant to me. Perhaps “all” once meant the best experience in bed, but now he thought it meant all that I needed, not just what he could give me under the covers. 

What was most difficult to accept was that—by putting himself on my leash—he gave me the choice to fulfil his desires. I don’t know if it was his goal or not, and I don’t think it was, but I felt burdened with that choice. I felt selfish for not giving to him when he was giving to me, but at the same time, I felt like it was necessary. And he had given me that leash so that I could figure myself out in the way I needed to. 

Before I started writing this story, my best way of remembering that Tyler had put hard work into our relationship was by reading his haiku. I am not Tyler, and I can’t tell you how he felt. I only know, truly, what I thought and what I felt. Without access to somebody else’s feelings, it’s easy to forget they have them. But Tyler’s poems open a window for me into his soul, if a small one, and I feel like I’m always learning more about him, always learning that he cares, that he loves me. 

He loved me then, holding himself back for me. But it wasn’t easy. Relationships have their ups and downs, and endurance doesn’t last forever. But read on with me, and let’s enjoy it while it lasts. 

* 

Tyler and I spent the week between the debate tournament and the video game tournament a lot closer than before. Each evening, when we would meet to practice, we sat right next to each other, on my bed or on his couch, giving each other kisses or gentle rubs between practice rounds, caressing each other as we talked. 

The way we acted when we were around each other in the cafeteria, it was like we were deprived of each other somehow, because we couldn’t stop touching, no matter how many times our friends complained about PDA. (He tried to give me a few wet kisses when they did that, and I’m only a little bit ashamed to say I happily complied.) 

But they didn’t see the way that, every night, when we finished gaming, we parted ways and went back to our rooms. Maybe that sounds innocuous—he lives in an apartment, and I lived in a dorm, so it was only sensible that we go off to our separate living spaces. But after our night at the hotel, after reading his haiku—I couldn’t bring myself to ask him into my bed, to tempt him with my skin and give him nothing. And he clearly couldn’t bring himself to ask me either, but I didn’t understand why. I thought—if he told me—maybe it would be easier for me to give him what he wanted. 

I had stopped sleeping naked—I was free of the overwhelming emptiness of lonely nights. But it was different, now, to crave his touch while lying my boxers and to know that all it would have taken were a few words in a question—and surrender. _Why is it so hard to trust him?_ I would wonder. And why did I have to keep asking the same question, over and over again, when he had proven himself so many times? 

We needed to communicate, but neither of us was capable, and though we didn’t fall out of love, we were rewarded for our failure with empty beds and lonely nights. Some say that change—especially in a cyclical situation like this—has to be provoked. Until some unexpected and intense factor comes to change your life or your actions, you’ll be stuck in your ways. But I prefer to think that—most of the time—it’s a combination of the steps you’re taking, slowly, not just chance. Every night, Tyler and I got closer to the verge of asking the question in one way or another. Both of us had something on our minds, and neither of us could quite say it, but we tried harder every day. 

The stress of our video game tournament served as the backdrop in which we finally decided to communicate. But it might have been a little bit of a mess. 

There was a reasonable drive up to the location of the Saturday tournament: a nearby, larger, public college with an esports building, of all things. We carpooled with two other teams, talking congenially, learning about each other and enjoying each other’s presence. But they weren’t quite our friends, so whenever we started talking, we ended up talking only within our two person teams. It was not like sitting at a table with the debate team or the swim team, when we would all talk about everything. It was not like playing Smash together, when we focused on improving. There was nobody but us to focus on and nothing to focus on but us. Questions kept bubbling to the surface of my mind, demanding I ask them, and I held them down for propriety’s sake, but that only worsened my anxiety. 

“When will we sleep together again?” I wanted to ask him, and at the same time, I needed to ask myself, “Why can’t I trust him?” He’d given me so many reasons to trust him, but I wished I could ask myself the question out loud so that he could give me another. But I didn’t. We weren’t in a private place; at least, not a place where nobody would care, even if they heard us. I was working myself up to ask the questions during the tournament. Probably not a good time to ask them, I thought, but if I never went for it, nothing would ever happen. I didn’t want to be stuck, and I didn’t want to hold Tyler in the ditch with me. We just had to talk. 

We went into the tournament building, signed in our team name: we called ourselves The Joshler, which was really just a cheesy ship name, but we pretended it was a mysterious reference to the Once-ler from the Lorax. We wandered to one of the lounges, where people were chatting in a loud cacophony that felt much like our school’s cafeteria. Here was a safe place to talk, and here we sat next to each other, quiet and feeling like fools. I stewed in my own questions, and I’m sure he did the same, neither of us capable of a word. 

The intercom went on and indicated that we should check our phones for the listings of the first round, which would be starting in ten minutes. I looked at Tyler helplessly, and he at me, and we both opened our mouths—he deferred to me, and I asked, quietly, “Why won’t you ask to sleep with me?” 

He answered with his question—“Why do you want to forget our first date?” 

The answers to both these questions were deeply entwined—but we couldn’t answer either. We didn’t have time. We both looked down at our phones abashedly, locating our Information and hurrying out of the lounge. We had little need to discuss our strategy; we wouldn’t know what characters we were playing against until we got there, but we knew what we had and what we were good at. 

We handed our controllers to the technicians and they hooked them up with alacrity, returning them to us so we could prepare our loadout—but neither team selected their characters, not until the last moments, to give each other the least prep time. In some ways, it felt like debate, but the learning of the other team and of the field of play had to be even faster. 

A map was randomly selected from the tournament’s listings, and at the last few moments, at the official’s behest, we selected our cheaters. I played Little Mac, a boxer and a strong land-based character, and Tyler played Jigglypuff, a powerful air-based character, so that we could cover each other’s weakness and have each other’s backs. We got into the zone quickly, trying not to think about our questions, for we were going to think of them enough today, and we had to claim victories before rising emotions got in the way. 

We played well and quietly, keeping each other’s backs. My boxer’s reflexes helped me to scan the whole stage effectively and watch for telegraphed actions, and Tyler was no slouch in the predictive department, either. However, he possessed more skill in Smash than I did, in general, so he headed up the action while I kept him safe and provided support. We carried on with perfect synergy, unruffled by failure and supportive in mistakes. 

The match ended well for us, and we won with a reasonable margin, proud of each other and excited. We just had to keep up this performance, and we could make it through the qualifying rounds. But the moment we took our controllers and left our stations, the questions we had asked fell back down on our heads. 

“Why?” I asked, again, as we walked back to the lounge, and he gave me a frown. 

“I—I don’t know,” he said. “I’m worried, Josh.” 

“Worried about what?” I asked. “That I’ll get mad? That I’ll leave you?” 

Tyler cocked his head. “No, I—I know you won’t leave me. I trust you, Josh,” he said, with so much certainty that I suddenly felt terrible. “I don’t trust me.” 

“About what?” I asked, as we sat down. 

He worked his mouth for a moment. “I—if I say it—I don’t want you to feel like I’m forcing you into anything, Josh...” 

“Is it something you want?” I asked. “I want to give everything to you, Tyler, you know that.” 

“No, you don’t,” he said, emphatically, and then he covered his mouth. “I mean, you do. I know you do. But you don’t.” 

“Could you just tell me?” I asked, my voice tight. 

“You tell me what it is you didn’t like about our first date, and then I’ll tell you,” he growled. “I know it was bad, I know, but I don’t know _why_.” 

The intercom came on at that moment and we both glared at it—yet, abandoning our questions, we looked at our phones and started getting back into the zone. As we walked to the lounge we quizzed each other on our mistakes, what each other had done well and what we had done badly, and our words were tense, if not quite cold. 

But the match was no better. The other team was quite vocal toward each other, and perhaps it rubbed off on us, because we started talking to each other, too—not always congenially. Frustration was getting to us—not our dynamic on screen, if you can believe it, but the way we talked to each other about it. We were more focused than ever, and we were close in step on screen, but our words said otherwise. Don’t get me wrong—we weren’t angry at each other, not yet. But we weren’t at peace, either. 

We won this round more closely than we would have liked, perhaps due to our stress, perhaps due to the skill of the other team. Tyler gripped my free wrist as soon as we were out and looked at me as we walked. “Why?” he asked, emphatically, and I remembered his question—what was wrong with the first date. I worked my mouth. “Didn’t you like it? I know it was a lot, I know it was too fast, but Josh, you looked like you enjoyed it.” 

I found some words at last, as we shuffled into the lounge and sat down. “I’ve never felt so good in bed in my life,” I hissed. “But that’s not what matters to me, Tyler—” He looked hurt. “I mean, it is, but— I don’t always want— I mean—” 

_“Please what?” Tyler asked, with a grin. “Please keep going?” He bucked his hips, driving himself the barest bit deeper, making my mouth drop open. “Please let up?” He bucked his hips again. “Please pull out?” Another thrust. “What do you want, Josh Dun?”_

_“I don’t fucking know!” I shouted, glaring at him and then arching my back as he thrust._

_“Your dick says yes,” Tyler said._

_“My dick isn’t my mouth!”_

_“Then talk to me,” he growled, and he leaned in to kiss me._

He stared at me as I remembered the moment, waiting for me to say something. “Sometimes I want what my dick wants, and sometimes I want what _I_ want, Tyler,” I said, a little more coldly than I ought. “Sorry. It’s just—yeah, you gave me what my dick wanted, and it felt amazing, but—what if I just wanted to enjoy you? You didn’t give me that chance. It was just... sex. No love.” 

Tyler deadpanned and said, “We met on a hook-up app. I was horny. You were the first guy I met who could take me and everything I could give, so I went a little bit overboard—” 

“A little bit?” I asked, angrily. 

“I mean, what else am I supposed to say?” he asked. “That was me doing my thing. I was trying to ruin you—you know, the good way.” 

“You _did_ ruin me, Tyler,” I said, desperately. “When you’re kissing me, when I can feel your lips, I’m always worried, just like you wanted me to be. I never know what you’re going to do to me next.” 

“Isn’t that what you want?” Tyler asked, incredulously. “To be at my mercy? To be all mine?” 

“No!” I cried, and he started. “Yes. Ish. Tyler, I want to be at your mercy because I trust you.” 

The intercom chimed. 

“You still don’t trust me to treat you right?” Tyler whispered. I worked my mouth as he stood up, looking hurt. I had thought he understood. _He can’t guilt me like that,_ I thought, angrily, but he was already looking at his phone and stalking off. I followed him after a moment, fuming. 

Our next round was tenser than the last by far. We started shooting words at each other when we made mistakes, accusing each other of trust issues or rashness, trying to get better just so we could prove each other wrong and only doing marginally better because of it. We should have been improving much more as we won rounds, because the better you do in qualifying rounds, the better the teams you’re placed against. We made a horrible show of ourselves with our words, even though our yelling was just one point of noise in a sea of screaming teams, and we just barely lost. 

“I told you why I didn’t want to remember the first date. Now tell me why you won’t sleep with me,” I growled, however petty it sounded. 

“Because I don’t trust myself,” he said. “Not to treat you right—I _know_ I can do that. But only if I know what you want. I’m scared I’ll give you more memories you don’t want to relive. But even worse, you won’t let me do the one thing I know for sure that you love, and when we were at your tournament I was struggling so hard not to start biting the hell out of you without your permission—I don’t know what’ll happen, if I fail.” 

“Well— well—“ he had bared all. I was silent until I sat back down in the lounge. “I’m just… I trust you, Tyler, but you don’t know what I want. You didn’t let me tell you. I’m not afraid that I’ll feel bad; I want you to make me scream… but I want you to learn what I want, not just take it from me, and then let me give it to you.” 

“But, Josh, you were trying to micromanage it,” he said, weakly. “You wanted to know when I would bite you and how long, that you could just say stop and I’d have to stop—that’s the opposite of what it’s supposed to be.” 

We both laughed, all of a sudden, at the absurdity of that statement. “Gosh, Tyler, it makes me hard just thinking about that.” He beamed. “But—I think there’s something wrong with that picture. I want to be at your mercy, but I want… mercy. For you to listen when I say I really don’t want something. For you to ask before you try something new, or even before you start doing something you’re used to.” I shuddered. “I still want to be afraid of your mouth. Just, not always.” 

“Not always,” Tyler whispered, testing the word. “If I was still on the hook-up app, Josh, I wouldn’t understand that. That’s all I’d want in a one-night stand, is for you to be at my mercy completely and constantly. But—now that I love you—I’m beginning to understand. I want to give you what you want, Josh, I really do, and if that’s just kisses and hugs sometimes, I’ll try my hardest to give you just that.” 

“I want to give you what you want, Tyler,” I said. “I don’t want to hold you back. We just need to spend some time exploring… what I’m comfortable with. I mean, yeah, the point is for me to be uncomfortable, but you know what I mean.” 

“I do,” Tyler said, with a nod. “We can keep trying. Figure out how we want to communicate.” 

“Not like we have in game,” I said, with a grin. “You keep mouthing off at me like that and you’ll be the one screaming in bed.” He blanched and I stuck out my tongue. 

“Wanna lick me with that?” he asked, with a purr, and I leaned in and drew my tongue up across his ear. He shivered hard, and I bit the bottom of his earlobe for good measure. He gripped my head with both his hands, pushed it away from his ear, and pulled it in so he could kiss me on the lips, and we wrestled with our tongues until—a few seconds later—the intercom chimed. 

We had gone to the same lounge after every match, so I hope (a little bit) that nobody had to watch that entire mess who wasn’t already invested in our story. The story wasn’t over—but the conversation had been settled, and with it, enough of my fears and his to put us on a track toward trust and mutual understanding. 

Yet—even relieving the tension the way we had—we still shouted at each other a little bit during the next match. We won it, at least, one step closer to qualifying for elimination rounds, and when we were finished, we ended up discussing strategy as opposed to trust issues—and snogging in the lounge, as opposed to growling at each other. We spent a bit more time snogging than we ought, all things considered, but at that point in our relationship it was to be expected. (It’s still to be expected. We’re lucky we don’t have any classes together.) 

We didn’t make it far through the elimination rounds, even though we did end up qualifying, and on some level, we were relieved—because the tension we had built up from our conversation still needed proper relief, and we were soon to get it. 

When we lost in the elimination rounds, we looked around to see if our previous carpool partners were all done—and, conveniently for our dinner plans, they were. We drove back with significantly less kissing and a lot more private touching in the back. Tyler, perhaps emboldened by our conversation, spent a lot of time behind my back and beneath my jeans, and the massage was nice, even if the price involved my hand on his menacing crotch for a long period of time. (Have I told you how big his dick is? Well, you’ll find out.) 

When we got back to the campus, we got changed and headed over to one of the gyms to lift weights together. We didn’t make the mistake of admiring each other while heavy weights were hanging over or heads, but we found our ways, no doubt about it, and if there wasn’t anyone else in the gym we would have showered together, too. We ate dinner together in the cafeteria and finally went to my room to do… well, we didn’t really know what to do. Without the Smash tournament hanging over our heads, we had no need to improve our teamwork. 

Tyler wryly suggested instead that we build up some tension by playing against each other. He bared his teeth at me and I grinned back, and then we jumped onto the Switch and started playing. He won the first round and I demanded a rematch; I won the second round and he demanded a tiebreaker; all along we made fun of each other for bad moves and congratulated each other on good ones, punched each other on the shoulder for one reason and kissed for another— 

And when I won the third round and started gloating, Tyler turned on me with a grin and outstretched arms and said, “You’re just asking for a biting.” 

I scrambled back with a grin and bumped into my desk and then I crawled up onto the bed as he approached me slowly, menacingly, baring his teeth. “Tell me if you don’t want it, or else…” he chomped his teeth hard, and I shivered and slid off the bed to the side just as he got on, waving my fists at him but saying nothing. He rushed at me from the bed and I tried to dodge, but he caught my escape and pinned me against the door with an approving hum. 

He kissed me on the lips and then lay his head in my shoulder as he kissed down my neck, and I watched in growing thrill as his teeth grazed my skin but didn’t quite bite me—and when his teeth started to press into the skin between my neck and my shoulder, I stiffened up and got cold feet. “Wait I’m not ready—“ I cried, as quickly as I could, and his teeth paused, the pressure on, but not enough to hurt. “Not ready,” I said, beginning to shake. He slowly let up. “I don’t know why, but I’m just not feeling it, not yet.” 

This was the moment of truth. I held my breath—would he pull away? Or would the cycle continue? I was hot. My face was red. I knew he could see it. To what would he listen? Me? Or what he thought I wanted? 


	4. Chapter Two, Part Two: Trust Is Like... Deepthroating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler helps me get into the mood.
> 
> Hey, Tyler. Yeah, you. Come deepthroat me while I write this. Oh fuck not me

The teeth pulled away and he peered at me. “Maybe I can help you get into the mood,” he said, slowly. “I just want you to enjoy. To feel good. I mean, yeah, I want to enjoy, too, but I can figure that out. It’s you I care about.” He beamed at me, and my heart warmed in that ray of sunlight. “Let me… let me give you a blowjob. I’ll try and deepthroat you, too; a bit of gagging never hurt anybody, right?” 

I looked at him with concern. “Are you sure, Tyler?” I asked. “I’m pretty big. You don’t have to take all of me.” 

Tyler looked at me with an expression of immense gravity. “Josh, if you feel hot enough to do it, I want you to facefuck me.  _ Make _ me take it all. Whatever I have to do for you to feel good, I’ll do it.” 

“Are you sure?” I asked, again. “I don’t know if—that’s not the way—you don’t have to do that, Tyler.” 

“I want to, Josh,” he said. “Let me do this.” He started singing a different tune. “Tell me you don’t want to see a cute guy sucking your dick like it’s the best thing in the world.” He puckered his lips, and then continued, “It’s gonna be so hot.” He kissed me on the lips, his hand drifting down to my jeans—I was hard, no doubt about it. “Your dick wants it,” he said. “Do you?” 

I paused and simmered in the image of Tyler on his knees, Tyler’s face crammed into my crotch, my hands on the back of his head. I—I  _ liked _ that. “Tyler,” I said, slowly, “I hope you enjoy deep throating. Because I’ve got a new kink.” 

He grinned like a madman and then pulled me in to kiss me again, suckling on my lips as if to give me a taste, letting my tongue fuck his mouth for a good few seconds before we started exchanging back and forth—while his hands and mine slipped down to each other’s waists and frantically started to undo each other’s jeans. 

As soon as both pairs were on the floor, he grabbed my waist and started to harry me toward the bed, sitting me down on it and then starting to tug at my boxers. He went down on my thighs with his lips as he did, kissing across the skin, nipping it ever so softly with his teeth, and I found that I trusted him not to bite me, trusted him to treat my flesh right as his tongue licked ever closer to my crotch and sent shivers up my spine. 

He got the boxers down and my cock sprang from its confines, bumping him in the forehead and then bobbing up to full mast, and as it loomed over him, eight inches long and thick enough to stuff any hole, he ignored it and set to work on my inner thighs. I sighed and relaxed, stabilising myself on both my hands, palms down behind my back, and I watched as his head slipped between my thighs and kissed closer and closer to my balls. 

And there his lips were, like pillows, kissing the bottom of my sack, spreading wider and beginning to suckle. His enthusiasm increased slowly, moment by moment, as he drifted across my balls, tonguing them gently and then giving them long licks with satisfied eyes. Those eyes—so eager—that was enough for me to start getting off, my arousal climbing as he lavished my sagging flesh in kisses and licks, as he suckled on each nut wetly and loudly and popped off with a moan—“Gosh, you know what you’re doing, Tyler,” I murmured. 

“Just you wait,” he said. “Got a lot more love to give you.” He pressed his lips to the base of my shaft, slipping his tongue between his lips and lashing my flesh gently, and then he drew his tongue upward. He brought a hand up to the upper side of my erection and tugged it down toward the ground as he licked toward the tip, leaving a long trail of saliva as he took inch after inch. He stopped at the ridge around the tip and gave it a gentle kiss, sending a shiver down my spine from the sensitivity, and then he kissed around the tip, now that he was angled straight at his face. 

I looked down and stared at the tip—I was already drooling precome, a sticky string of it connecting his chin and my urethra. The hand he had on my shaft, he wrapped around my girth, and he started to stroke and tug, his palms catching on my skin or caressing it, the different sensations shooting me further up the ladder of arousal and turning the invisible drool into a dribble of pre from my tip. 

He tilted his head down and opened up his lips to catch it, his eyes grinning at me and his expression making me moan for no other reason than that he was beautiful, kneeling there, catching my treasure, swallowing it like it was precious—and then he moved back up and wrapped his lips around the head of my cock, and I shuddered hard. “Tyler,” I moaned as he began to suckle on the sensitive ridge, “ohh…” I sighed, as his tongue lavished my tip, and I gasped as he slid slowly deeper. 

His free hand drifted to my balls, his fingers caressing the skin as he started bobbing back and forth on my length. He suckled as he went, the noise obscene and interspersed with little moans, while his hand spread his saliva across my length, caressing it all the way. I brought a hand down to run it through his hair, massaging the top of his head softly, and as he bobbed, I felt my tip meet resistance and I heard him give a quiet retch—he’d hit the back of his throat. 

He looked up at me, without distress, without concern—with a question. No, a request. He took his hand off my sack and raised it to touch my hand on his head—and then he put his hand on the back of his head, squeezing it and then putting pressure on it. I understood what he wanted, and I nodded, starting to get a little more excited. His hand went back to my balls, and his other hand came off my length and slid underneath my right buttock, squeezing the flesh like he had in the car, massaging it firmly and making the muscle bend for him. 

I took a deep breath, steadying myself on the hand I had on the bed, and then I tugged at his head, starting to pull him downwards. I took it slow, testing his resistance as he shifted his body to get a better angle, and then I gasped as I felt warmth envelop the tip of my cock, the wet flesh of his throat enclosing it like a velvet glove—and I could hear the sound of his soft gags, feel muscle convulsing around my tip and milking it for more pre, pre that I happily provided. 

I could feel it streaming softly from my tip, like a constant, blissful, ebbing relief, given a home in Tyler’s perfect throat. I found myself pulling him steadily, bit by bit taking him closer to my crotch. He squeezed my balls gently, and as his gags got louder, the hand kneading my ass clutched it harder than before, as if it was his only outlet. I relished in the gentle ache, knowing his fingers were going to leave bruises, missing the bruises he’d given me on our first date. 

I barely realised what was happening until he made a loud, choking noise and started to pull off of my dick. He kept choking as he pulled off, and my dick felt wetter; where his lips were not, there was a thicker layer of saliva, mixed with the translucent white of precum. I grinned despite myself as he popped off my dick all the way, panting and looking up at me with a grin in return. 

“Couldn’t make it all the way?” I asked, with a smirk. 

“You’re one to talk,” he grumbled. “You couldn’t take it on your own; had to shove it down your throat myself to get it all the way.” 

I crossed my arms. “Is that what you want?” I asked, sticking out my tongue. 

He gulped. “Kinda...” My eyes widened. “I mean, it’s not like gagging  _ hurts _ . It’s kind of nice to feel... stuffed that way.” He brought a hand to his neck, as if feeling for my cock, and I bared my teeth. “Yeah. Do it. Uh, once you’re actually in my throat. Then you can stuff it down.” 

“Whatever you say, Tyler,” I said, with a smirk, and my dick throbbed at the thought. It had felt  _ good _ when he choked. I needed more of that. 

“Just, uh... Could you let me off if I tap your thigh?” he asked. “I’m not really a fan of suspense on the other end.” 

I nodded quickly. “Of course. You could try and tug with your head and beg, too, but... eh, I’m not really that into the idea of seeing you beg.” 

He let out a sigh of relief. “Neither am I.” We both laughed. “But that’s why I’m the sadist and you’re the masochist.” He smacked my ass with the hand that had been clutching it, and I groaned hard—the smack had upset all my new bruises. “Want more bruises?” 

“More bruises,” I said, with a grin. 

“Then fuck my stupid face,” he said, and he went back down on my dick, his lips caressing it until my tip hit the back of his throat and he gagged like a songbird—that is, beautifully. I got my hand back on his head and started tugging him forward, gently as before as he adjusted himself so I could fit. As soon as I felt the vice grip of his throat, I grinned at him, gripped his head a little tighter, and pulled him straight down, arching my back as I felt the walls of his throat start milking me hard, taking one inch and then another, a little bit more. I met some resistance along the way, especially as his gags got harder, but before I knew it, his lips were mashed into my crotch and he was choking up a storm. 

I got both hands on his head as he slipped both of his hands underneath my butt, and with my grip I started to tug him back and forth. I mashed his nose into my crotch unceremoniously, once, twice, a third time, as he choked and gagged and moaned around my length, a cacophony of sensations that kept me on my toes and had me stiffening and relaxing as pleasure pulsed up my spine. 

His hands started to dig into my cheeks as I picked up the pace. On the right, he managed to find skin where he hadn’t bruised me yet, but a few moments later I felt the familiar, growing ache that meant a bruise was coming fast. I groaned as I fucked his face in quick, jackhammering thrusts, letting the tight grip of his walls push me up toward climax, and then I slowed down, taking long, firm strokes that gave his throat time to relax before I forced it open again. 

Eventually, after one long thrust, I kept his face mashed into my crotch for a few long seconds, leaving one hand on his head. The other went down to caress his neck and to feel the hard bulge of my cock stretching it out. I could feel the muscles convulsing—my shaft was loving the massage from within and my hand could feel it from without. After I had heard his violent gags for—well, not quite long enough (but I’d hear them again), he tapped my thigh and I started to pull off as he made muffled groans into my length. 

When he smacked my thigh, I sped up the process, and soon he was off and spluttering, a mix of spit and drool and precum dripping from his lips as he gasped for breath. He tried to say something, but no words came out, so he pointed down instead and I looked: he was hard as a rock. He grinned up at me and then went back to panting, and I shuddered, a load of precum bursting out of my tip and landing in his hair, matting a few square inches of it down. He beamed at me. 

“Gotta admit,” he said, hoarsely, “I kind of like it when you use me. I like it when I’m making you feel good,” he added, sounding a bit delirious. 

“You okay, dude?” I asked, cocking my head. 

“Yeah,” he said, after a bit. “Just getting used to not being fucked.” 

“That’s not going to last long,” I said, with an evil grin. “Uh, unless you want it to,” I added, quickly, frowning in concern. 

“No, no, just needed a quick break,” he said, and then he grinned. “Now let’s go. I wanna make you go off  _ hard _ .” 

“But—“ I said. “How am I supposed to get horny for when you bite me?” 

“When?” Tyler asked, wryly. “Look, if I remember correctly—and I do—you came three times on our first date. You can handle an itty bitty little deepthroat. And we’ll have something to do while we wait… you can lick your cum off my face. Now fuck it.” 

“Even when you’re on the bottom all you do is tell me what to do,” I grumbled, even as I lowered my thoroughly slick dick toward his lips again. “No choice in the matter. Never ask what I want.” I moaned as he wrapped his lips around my tip, hollowed his cheeks, and swallowed it straight into his throat. “Fuck, but you know what I want, anyway, don’t you?” I gripped his head tight in both my hands and shoved his face down my shaft, force-feeding it to him inch by rapid inch as his throat massaged my cock, watching him look up at me with watering eyes as I mashed his face into my pubes. 

I pulled his head back and started to buck my hips, rising off the bed as I thrust my pelvis into his steadied face, blasting through his throat until it held me in a vice grip, pulling back for the gorgeous friction as he tried to swallow and only gagged instead. “That’s right, choke on this dick, Tyler, fuck, you look beautiful—“ I stood up from the bed, lifting Tyler’s head up with me while he was buried balls deep—and then I thrust even harder, three inches out and then in, four inches, pulling all the way out of his throat and then forcibly reopening it, and finally I was jackhammering his face, thighs and glutes and abs working overtime to brutalise his throat as I got ready to cum. 

“Gonna fill you up and then some, baby; hope you’re ready—fuck! Tyler!” And then I was holding his face hard against my crotch as he choked and gagged and J was coming, rope after thick, massive rope shooting from my tip straight down his gullet as his entire throat milked me for my seed. He tapped me on the thigh at last and I started to pull out, quickly this time, and then I was coming into his mouth and he was swallowing like a madman to drink down everything I was shooting into his mouth, shot by shot until his mouth was stuffed to his cheeks and cream was leaking out of his lips, and I pulled all the way out just before he started truly choking. 

I saw a thick rope of white semen shoot onto his face and splatter all over it; and then another, and then another, a webbing that was spreading and thickening, all over his forehead and cheeks, dangling over shut eyes, coating a cute nose in white, more and more until he was thoroughly glazed; I came in his hair, matting it down with my load, and straight at both his cheeks so it splattered onto his ears, all over his neck and collarbone and chest— 

And I was done, and panting, and he breathing hard through his nose because he still had a lot of cum in his mouth. I looked in awe as he swished it around with his tongue. He wiped the come away from his eyes with the backs of his hands, but he was still glazed all over, and he looked at me, his eyes the only undiluted spot of colour on his face, as he swallowed, once, twice, three times, slowly drinking down my gift until it was pretty much gone. Then, at last, he started gasping for breath. 

Even as he panted, he was using his low-hanging tongue to lavish my softie with love—I was covered in the mess of his spit and the fluids I’d made that he had choked up onto my shaft, so it was all off-white and he seemed determined to taste it and clean it fully. His tongue was all covered in white again when he was finished, and he swished it around his lips to add to their coating before he repainted his mouth in it and swallowed what was left. “Can you tell yet?” he asked, in the cutest hoarse voice I’d ever heard. “I really like the way you taste. Wanna try?” 

“Huh?” I asked, but he was already standing up, caressing my waist with both hands, his upper arms and upper torso layered thoroughly with my come. His lips met mine as thick seed slid slowly down his body, and I could taste me on him. He parted his lips, and I slid my tongue across them, collecting the mess I had made as he gave a quiet moan, and I put my hands on his sides, holding him firmly as I poked my tongue through his lips, kneading his muscular flesh as I began to paint his mouth in my saliva and lap up the coating of semen on his teeth, his gums, his inner cheeks, a tender bath, my gift to him for his gift to me. I cleaned him until my tongue was coated, white dripping from its either side, strings connecting my tongue to our lips and his inner cheeks, and he wiped it off with his own tongue and swallowed. 

He pulled away from the kiss, still holding my waist in the tender embrace of his hands. “You must have come a couple of pints before you pulled out, Josh,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “I’m really feeling it. Now it’s your turn for a meal…” His hands moved up, sliding across my abs and grasping my chest, squeezing it gently and then pushing me back against the bed until I took the hit and lay down. He did the same, lying next to me on his back. “Shimmy. We can both fit lengthwise on the bed, right?” We could, AJ we did, lying next to each other, his come-slick arm pressing into mine. “Now roll over me and clean me up,” he said, all nonchalant. 

“What?” I asked. “Of… my come?” 

“You heard me. Clean me up. Every drop.” I leaned my head up to look at his white-glazed face; he was smirking. “We need a little bit of time to get you horny again. So I can bite you.” I’m not going to lie, arousal shot through my crotch at that moment. I wanted it, I realised—I wanted it bad. We were in the mood for it already; I just needed the proper arousal to get me into it. “So, clean me. And I’d better be pristine, or you’re going to get the biggest fuckin’ hickey on your neck.” 

I blushed. “I can’t clean your hair with my tongue,” I said. 

“That’s the only excuse you get,” Tyler said, with a hoarse chuckle that made me shiver to my bones. “Everything else… get to it.” 

I rolled on top of Tyler, getting on my elbows and knees, and I stared at his stupid, beautiful face for a few moments, layered with cream as it was, mostly clean but sticky where hands had wiped away the semen all over his eyelids and around them. I leaned down to kiss him gently, suckling on his lower lip, and then I moved to the corner of his mouth, wetting my lips in the mess I’d made, slipping my tongue through and licking it, swirling it around until I pulled my tongue back into my mouth and swallowed. It wasn’t unpleasant, but what I found I loved about it was that I was doing it for Tyler. So I licked the spot again, just to make  _ sure _ that spot was clean, and then I lavished the area around his mouth, licking and suckling all around his lips, coming down to bathe his chin until it glistened with my saliva and then dragging my tongue and lips up one side of his jawline and then the other, slow and thorough. 

I took the time to suckle on both his cheeks, laying kisses instead of tongue, one after the other peppering his cheeks, and then it was my tongue up the bridge of his nose, laying saliva across his forehead like he was my Simba, licking and kissing until his face was clean from top to bottom. All that was left was his ears, and I dragged my tongue slowly across each, sucking up what was left. I leaned back up to look at his face, slick with my saliva but altogether clean, and I smiled dreamily. “Your kisses feel so good, Josh,” Tyler said, with a happy sigh. “I love being in love with you.” 

“I do, too,” I murmured, and then I leaned down to kiss him again, and this time he tasted my mouth, probing it and swabbing it with his tongue until it was clean of my own come where once it was coated. “You’ve still got a whole upper body to clean,” he murmured, into the kiss, and then, tentatively, he closed his teeth around my lower lip, gentle at first. I opened my eyes and looked at him—he looked at me. And he started to pack on the pressure, teeth sinking deeper into my lip, and I squirmed, arousal flooding my loins as I tried to pull back, but that only made it hurt more, and he just bit me harder, until I was whining into the kiss, whining into his teeth, shutting my eyes tight as he held my lip in a vice grip—and then he let go, and I gasped, wobbling on my elbows and knees, leaning back and sitting it up, gingerly touching my lip and wincing. A string of precum was hanging from my tip, slowly falling down toward his abdomen, and I was half-hard all over again. 

“Your dick wants it,” Tyler said, quietly, softly, “but do you, Josh?” 

It was my turn to make a decision. He had held back for me. He had waited for me. He had gagged for me. If he would do all that for me, what would I do for him? Like my question, my  _ need _ for him to wait, that moment of truth, so, perhaps, this was his. 


	5. Chapter Two, Part Three: Trust Is Like... Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler bites me. More than once. And this time, I love it.
> 
> I'm done now, Tyler. Let me post this and I'll give you some sugar.

I nodded, slowly. 

“Are you ready to surrender?” he asked. “To me? I wanna claim you. I wanna  _ own  _ you.” 

I paused. “I don’t know yet,” I whispered. “Almost. Just for biting,” I added, quickly. 

“Just for biting,” he confirmed. “You can have a little more time, babe. I won’t force it. Now—“ He smiles a little more devilishly. “Clean up the rest of me.” 

I shimmied backward on the bed, thinking about Tyler claiming me even as I drew my tongue up his abs, along one of the thin trails of seed that had dripped from his chest, collecting it all, and then again and again along every gorgeous trail. My lips found his sides, and I spread his arms so I could get in and kiss them, the mess that was slowly pouring down his left and his right. I lapped it up in stroke after stroke like a cat would clean his own fur, tongue out, lick, tongue in, swallow, out, lick, in, swallow, until his left side was thoroughly clean, and then I was on his right. I lifted one of his arms and kissed his bicep, sucking on it gently, and then longer and longer, as he whines about the mark and I gave him a hickey where the come had been—and then I was lapping up his arm, exploring everywhere to find every drop, until his gently bulging bicep was pristine, and then it was off to the next one. 

His shoulders, next, peppering little nips of my teeth all over the flesh as I buried my head into the bed so I could get everywhere, and then his neck, tongue and teeth and lips and long seconds spent giving hickeys that he would undoubtedly show off to all his friends. Then, finally, it was his chest, tongue swirling in circles around his squeezable pecs, closing inward as I cleaned them thoroughly from the mess I had made, dragging over his nipples as I went for the centre of each until I topped it off with a kiss, and then, on a whim, I was sucking on his left nipple, dragging at it with my tongue, flicking it with my tongue, and finally tugging at it gently with my teeth until Tyler was moaning for more, and just then, I let go to give the treatment to the right one. 

I leaned back up to look at my handiwork. He was almost pristine—but seed had dripped down his sides again while I neglected his chest, and his arms had more streaks on them, and—well, I went back to work, but I knew by now I was thoroughly horny. I finally collapsed onto his chest, still a little sticky, but wet with my saliva, and I slipped my head over his shoulder, turning so I could breathe into his ear. “Okay,” I said, quietly. “I’m ready.” 

“Really?” he asked, with so much boyish excitement in his voice that I melted. “Tell me what you want, baby; I want to know what I can do to you,” he continued, desperately. 

“I want you to bite me,” I said, “all over, wherever you want to, whenever you want, however long you want. Even if I say no,” I whispered. “Even if I try to back away. Pin me against the wall and bite me. Lie on top of me and put me in a headlock and bite me. Bend me over the chair and bite me. Don’t let me escape,” I murmured. Suddenly, I felt something hard and hot against my abdomen, pressed as it was into Tyler’s. I rose up and looked down—he was hard. He was so hard, and he was huge, just like I remembered him, and I looked at his face, and he had this mouth-wide-open grin that looked so pleased and so eager, and he wrapped his hands around my head and pulled me down for a chaste kiss, his teeth grazing my lower lip as he pushed me back up. 

“Josh, baby, that’s everything I wanted to hear from you,” he said, the excitement in his voice palpable. “I’ve been waiting so long for you to just—be mine, y’know? In that way,” he added, quickly. “I already know I own your ass.” He grinned, and I grinned back, and then he chomped his teeth and I paled. “Oh, yeah,” he moaned. “I like it when you get scared. You should be. This is going to  _ hurt _ . Can we start?” 

“We already started,” I said, with a sigh of relief. It was done. I had surrendered. My cock throbbed. “I’m yours, now. Yours to ruin. I wanna be scared of you, baby, scared of your kisses, scared of your mouth.” 

“Then turn around and give me your ear,” Tyler said. “I’m gonna show you just what you signed up for. Bite that cute little plug right off your ear,” he murmured, and my eyes widened; I started to shake my head— “Do you trust me?” he asked. 

I nodded, and then, as if to show that I did, I turned my head and offered him my ear. He sucked on the bottom of my earlobe as he ran his hands down my sides, and then his teeth grazed the very bottom and nipped it, sharp-feeling edges digging into the stretched, sensitive skin for a few seconds before he let go—and then his teeth reached higher and dug  _ hard _ into the flesh above my earlobe plug, harder and harder, pulling at it as he growled into my ear and I whined and tried not to squirm, the pain growing and my cock throbbing until—he let go. He wrapped his lips around the spot and sucked on it… while he clamped his front teeth around the first spot he had bitten, just below the plug, moaning low. 

He let go at last and I sighed in utter relief—and with a little bit of longing. He must have heard it, because he started kissing my jawline, suckling on the skin, closer and closer to my chin. He started to nip it gently with his teeth, but every nip was a little bit of a thrill, not knowing if it was going to turn into something worse. He captured my lips in his, suckling on my lower lip and then letting me work my lips into his, but—at the same time—I started to feel pain in my ear, burning in the spot he had bitten, slowly getting worse and worse. “You think I should rip it off?” he asked, into the kiss, pressing his fingernails into my earlobe: he was pulling on it. “Tear it, bit by bit.” His teeth started to sink into my lower lip, and then he gave a particularly hard yank on my ear as he bit my lip hard. I whined into the kiss as he held my lip and my ear tight, and I tried pulling back, but it only hurt worse. 

“Please,” I mumbled, into the kiss, and like magic, he let go of both ear and lip. 

Only to say, “Please, what?” He grinned and I paled. “Please do it to my other ear? Sure. Give me your ear, baby,” he said, with that smile, and I hesitated. “Give it to me,” he said, a little less cheerily, and I shook my head. “Come on, Josh. Give me the goods so I can hurt you.” He touched my ear, the one he had bitten, and I pulled back with a gasp—and he wrapped both his hands around the back of my head and pulled me forward. “I told you to give me your ear,” he growled, but he growled through a grin, and then he turned my head forcibly and pulled my ear to his lips. He breathed over it, gripping my head tight, lips closer and closer, sucking on the skin… and then his teeth clamped around the edge of the skin, and I started to groan, and then they let go and found the skin above the plug, and he held my ear in a vice grip as he wrapped his hands around my waist. 

He started to roll us over as he bit me, and the movement made him tug at my ear with his teeth in the worst of ways, until my groans turned louder and more desperate, and then I was on my back, and he was on top of me, tugging so hard I thought he would tear my ear in two just like he had warned me—and then he let go, and I lay my head back with a groan. “Fuuuuuuck,” I moaned. “Oh, fuck, my ears ache. It hurts so bad, Tyler,” I said, and he touched one of my ears where he had bitten, and I stiffened up from the oversensitivity. He grinned and dragged his tongue from the top of my ear all the way to the bottom, where the plug and the marks were, and I moaned loudly when his tongue bumped over them. 

“Friendly reminder that your dick is hard,” Tyler said. “But is this what  _ you _ want?” 

“Yes,” I murmured. “ _ Yes _ ,” I repeated, emphatically. “The way you talk to me is—it’s—oh, gosh, I feel lightheaded, I’m so fuckin’  _ horny _ .” 

“Well, you mess with the bull…” Tyler grinned, and I smacked his ass. “If you ever want me to bite you even harder, do that again,” he said. “I think it’s time for your first punishment.” I blanched as his lips fell around my jawline, near my ears, and started to kiss lower and lower, halfway between chin and ear—and then his teeth fell around the skin, tugging at it, pulling it away from the bone until, at last, he could clamp his teeth almost together, squeezing my sensitive skin until it burned like fire, and then he started  _ chewing _ on it—and, blessedly, he let go and I lay my head back into the bed. 

“C’mon, that’s nothing,” he said, with another laugh. And then he hit the spot again; it was already bruised, but this time he bit the skin right into the bone, crushing it between a rock and a hard place on both sides. I pounded the bed with a fist and then gripped the sheets tight in my hand, trying to find some outlet for the pain, all while I whined and tried not to groan too loudly. “Gonna have to work harder to make you scream my name, huh?” he asked, his lips but not his teeth pressing into the bruise he had left, sucking it until it filled with pleasure. Everyone was going to ask if I had had a fight. 

He kissed me again, shoving his tongue into my mouth while his finger rubbed the bruise he had made and forced me to squirm. His teeth grazed my bottom lip, already bitten to aching once, and it whined in warning in the touch—and it must have been a prophet, because he started to bite it, harder and harder every moment, until it was red hot and burning and I was pushing my head down into the bed, trying to escape—but both his hands gripped my head, pressing over my ears, holding me tight as he bit me, and then pushing me down into the bed as he started to tug on my lip with his teeth, stretching it out further and further until I was letting out louder and louder “aaah”s, trying to squirm but held in his grip—and my lip snapped back, at last, and it felt like it had been bitten raw. I felt like I could cry, and I realised that I was whimpering. 

“You’re so cute when you’re vulnerable,” Tyler whispered, still holding my face, but his grip was softer, more tender. “I just wanna lavish you.” He found my bottom lip with both his again—but this time, there were no teeth, only the velvet embrace of wet lips, suckling on the aching flesh until the pain dulled and I stopped whimpering. “Promise I’ll bite you there again. Nowhere is safe, even after I’ve bitten you there once. It’s all fair game.” I gulped, but he just smiled—so tenderly—and laid his lips on mine, and somehow I knew that all he was going to do was kiss me. We relished the moment, my hands on his waist, his on my head, before he pulled away and opened his eyes, looking into mine. “I think you were right. This is so much better when we’re in love.” 

I nodded, giving him a dreamy smile, and he chuckled. “Wouldn’t trade you for the world,” he said. “Mind tugging off my boxers, by the way?” I laughed. “I don’t want them to get too wet. I wouldn’t want to impose and borrow one of your pairs.” 

“That’s sweet,” I said, as I began to pull his boxers down, slipping them down his legs while he pulled up so I could get them off his ankles. My hands returned to his waist, but they slid curiously over the flesh in his ass, and then they began to squeeze gently, playing with his muscle in their grip. “You have such a good ass, Tyler,” I said. “You gotta let me tap this some time.” 

“Not today,” Tyler said, with a grin. “But maybe.” Suddenly, he ground into me, and I remembered the intense heat pressing into my abdomen, leaking precum onto my gut—oh, I felt surprisingly slick, now. I had been hyper-focused on the pain and my own arousal, and I had barely noticed that he was hard as a rock. “I’m so hard, baby,” Tyler said, in desperation. “Can I, uh, can I fuck your thighs? While I bite you? It’ll mess up the sheets, but I think it’s too late for that…” 

I laughed. “Of course you can,” I said, feeling a sharp pain in my lips and jaw as I spoke. “I want you to feel good. Fuck,” I said, all of a sudden. “Feel good?” I laughed again. “It hurts to talk.” 

“As it should,” Tyler said, grinning. 

“This is so fucked up,” I groaned, but I gave him a knowing smile. “You’re fucked up.” 

“Just like you’re gonna be when I’m done with you,” Tyler said, leaning down to press his teeth into the bruise in my jaw for a few, torturous moments. I held my breath as he held me, a low groan slowly rising out of my throat—and then he let go, and I sighed deeply. “I bet you’re gonna ache for days. Weeks?” he asked, looking to the side contemplatively. He kissed the spot and sucked on it gently, and my whole body relaxed in sudden relief. 

“This isn’t going to end very soon, is it?” I asked, weakly. I didn’t know whether it was a request, or a plead, or somehow both. No, I  _ wanted _ this. 

“No,” Tyler said, in a low, devious purr that made me throb and shiver. “No, it is not.” He gave me one more kiss, lips alone at first, and then he offered his tongue, and we wrestled, back and forth, in my mouth and then in his, moaning into each other’s lips as we made out. 

Then he was kissing my chin, lips sucking and then teeth grazing, and a hand came to the back of my neck and lifted it from the bed. “Head back,” he said, and I obeyed. “Gonna hide this bruise.” I lifted my head immediately, opening my mouth to protest, but he laughed and grabbed my jaw with his other hand, shutting my mouth, putting pressure on the bruise in my jaw so I had to whine, and pushing my head back again, exposing the skin between my chin and neck. 

“It wasn’t an option,” Tyler said, severely, as he pressed his lips to the skin, wetting it with a slow lick. 

“Be gentle,” I mumbled. 

He chuckled. “No.” He clamped his teeth around my skin, bunching it up in a tight grip, and he  _ yanked _ . I hollered a curse that devolved into a guttural “agh” of a shout while he pulled and pulled—and then he let the skin snap back. 

I stopped shouting, panting desperately, gasping out, “Tyler, Tyler, it—” He bit again, roughly and sharply. “ _ Hurts!”  _ I screamed, as he gave another burning tug, and then another, as if he wanted to rip the flesh right out of my neck. I moaned desperately, digging my fingers into his ass as he tore at my flesh, but when he let go at last, my grip relaxed... 

And then he slammed his teeth back into the bruise on my jaw. “Tyler!” I shouted, and I  _ squeezed _ . “Oh, fuck, Tyler, I’m on fire, I need you to—to—” One of his fingers danced across the bruises he had left under my chin, and I gasped. “Do that again,” I moaned; the touch had been electric. He chuckled into my jaw, brushed his finger slowly across the bruises as I squirmed and moaned under his touch, and then at last he let go of my jaw, making me gasp. He lapped at the bruise on my jaw with his tongue, and every lick made me press my head back into the bed and stretch out; the way it felt made me want to run away and lie right here and take it all at once. 

His lips found the underside of my chin and kissed it, and I stiffened up as I felt the cold touch of his teeth. I didn’t know what he was going to do, I wasn’t ready to take it—and then he slipped out his tongue and dragged it across the underside of my skin, and I moaned his name so loud it was almost a shout of its own. “Do that again, please,” I moaned, as he pulled away, but he hovered his face over mine, smirking, his touch far away from that spot. 

“You’re so easy when you’re like this, Josh,” he said, biting his lip so cutely I wanted to kiss him. I pushed my head up and he pushed his lips into mine. “So easy to scare,” he murmured, into our chaste kiss, and his teeth found their way onto my lower lip, which was deeply bruised, and I felt a gentle pain at the touch. I tried to pull away, but his hands were under my head. I made a muffled whine, and he pressed his teeth just a little bit deeper... and then separated. 

His lips kissed across my cheek, toward my ear, and I stiffened up again as they approached my earlobe. I could feel the pain acutely. “So easy to please,” he whispered, breath misting over the bruise and making me shiver, and then he wrapped his lips around it and sucked on it, release flooding through my skull until I felt light-headed. He pulled away and I made a pathetic whine, but his lips found my other ear and sucked on that one, too. I relaxed wholesale into the bed. 

“So easy to hurt,” he said, and then he started to chew on my ear, right where he’d bitten deepest into it earlier. Every chew was a new bite of pain, and he kept the pressure on at all times; I tried to pull away, but that just made it hurt worse—he even  _ let _ me try to drag myself out of his grip, but he only bit me harder when I did, and I was shouting his name, and curses, and pleas to stop chewing, anything to make him let go. I could feel him leaking precum onto my abdomen—I was, too. It was like my cries of pain were music to both our ears. 

He let go at last, looking at me with the most adoring of smiles, and I smiled weakly at him in return. “So easy to love,” he said, tenderly, and he kissed me, and I just melted as he tongued my lips. “Do you—do you still love it, Josh?” he asked, his voice sincere. 

“Yes,” I said, immediately, emphatically. “I love it when you hurt me.” 

He smiled a little wider. “Do you love it when you try to get away and you can’t?” 

“I do, Tyler.” 

“Do you love it when you plead and I don’t listen?” he asked, his brow furrowed. 

I saw his nervousness, and I smiled the most disarming smile I could. “I do, Tyler, I promise.” 

“I love it when I hurt you,” Tyler said, kissing me on the lips. “I love your little groans, your little whines, the way you squint when you’re in pain. I love it when you tell me it hurts. I love it when you plead for me to stop.” 

“Could we just—could we just tell that to everyone on the floor?” I asked, and we both laughed. “I don’t think this sounds very good...” 

“I have no idea how to convince anyone that this is consensual,” Tyler said. “Fuck. We gotta figure that out.” 

“Not right now,” I said. “You’ve still got, like... fuck,  _ all _ of my body left to bite.” I gave a little whimper, and he ground into me as if he  _ liked _ hearing that. “I can’t believe all we’ve done is my face.” 

“One, two, three, four, five spots?” Tyler counted. “And you’re like putty in my hands. I bet—hear me out—I bet you’re gonna try and run once I start biting your chest.” 

“No way,” I said, with a pout on my face. “I’m not a wimp. I can take the pain.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Tyler asked, once again looking like a devil. “Wanna bet on it?” 

“Name your price,” I said, defiantly. 

“If you get away from me while I’m tearing up your chest,” he said, and I shivered, “I get to bite your shoulders whenever I want... all week.” 

“Only tomorrow,” I said. 

“Five days.” 

“Three. But... what’s in it for me?” I asked. 

“Name your price,” he said, with a wink, and I squeezed his asscheeks, which I realised I still had a grip on. 

“These,” I said. “And that cute little hole between.” 

Tyler ‘hmm’ed. “Hard sell. You’d be my first top,” he said, with a blush. 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” I said, betraying my desire. “Five days, then.” 

“Can I have the skin between your neck and shoulder?” 

“Fuck,” I said, again. He’d found my cunning plan. I was going to wear t-shirts so there’d barely be anything to bite. 

“Five days, shoulder  _ and _ that spot I know you can’t cover up, or if you win you get my virgin ass. That's my final offer.” He winked, and I groaned. He had gotten me. 

“Deal,” I said. “Make my whole chest black and blue if you want, no way I’m getting off this ride now.” 

“Mmm, you’re going to regret ever saying that,” Tyler said, and then he lifted back up from my chest, his toned body looming over me as he got on elbows and knees. His cock hung low, but not that low, so I could see it dangling, hard as a rock, but not quite touching me. He shimmied backward on the bed, pausing to kiss the spot under my chin for a few precious moments, sucking on it so I moaned and licking it so I nearly hollered—and then he was moving down again, kissing his way down my neck, licking my collarbone briefly and then peppering the whole bone with kisses from left to right. 

“Has anyone ever told you your pecs are really nice?” Tyler asked, his head hovering above my chest. “Nice and hilly.” He shifted his weight into his left elbow and lifted a hand to place into my right pec… and to grope it. “And squeezable.” He rubbed his fingers into it, kneading the soft muscle, and I laughed. “You won’t be laughing soon.” 

I paled, and he laughed, and I throbbed—and then I became aware of my grip on his ass and I loosened it, rubbing his muscle softly. “Could we stay like this, first, for a bit? I just want to hold you.” 

“Yeah,” Tyler said, softly. “So do I.” So there we were, his head over my chest, elbows on the bed, hands rubbing my pecs, while my arms wrapped around his sides and I felt the warm flesh of his butt—so little lust in that moment, only intimacy. I breathed deep, aware now of his firm abdomen pressing against my member, of his hot erection nestled softly between my thighs, his sides hugged by the insides of my elbows, his back against my forearms—it was perfect. In that moment, looking at his smile, that was all I wanted. 

In the next moment, looking at the teeth within his grin, I remembered what else I wanted: for Tyler to ruin me. I got off on this—oh, I got off on this so hard, just a reminder. I didn’t make that bet because I didn’t want to get bit; I was  _ asking _ to be made to shake and scream until I wanted to run. I wanted Tyler to go all out. It was scary, it was frightening, it made my whole body tense to think about it, but this moment, lying here with Tyler, who was waiting so patiently for me to be ready for him, in this moment I could relax. 

“I’m not ready,” I said, with a hoarse laugh. “But let’s do it.” 

“Mm,” Tyler mused, as he slid his hands slowly, reluctantly off of my pecs and lay his chin on my sternum. “I like it when you ask for it.” He kissed the middle of my collarbone and then dragged his tongue across the top of my pecs. “Beg for my teeth, Josh. Beg for me to hurt you.” 

“I need it, Tyler,” I said, almost whined. “I need it,” I repeated, breathily, more emphatically. “I missed your teeth, I feared your teeth, for two months, but I want to feel you bite me again, Tyler,” I moaned. He gave me a little nip, teeth closing around a little bit of skin at the top of my left pec, and then let go; the pain was minimal. “I want you to hurt me, Tyler, I want it so damn bad—“ I was getting louder, and he bit my chest in the same spot, a little deeper, a little longer—“I want you to fuck me up, I need you to make me scream, please, I want you to  _ hurt _ me!” He clamped his teeth hard around the spot he had bitten twice. “Fuck!” I shouted. “Tyler—please—“ he bit it harder, deeper, like it was about to tear— “It hurts so bad, don’t stop—“ 

He let go, and I panted desperately, a hand shooting up to my chest to feel it, and he smacked it away. “Only I can touch you there right now,” he said. “Go back to my ass. You want to win it, don’t you?” He dragged his upper teeth across the bruise he had made and I arched my back, my hand coming straight back to his ass to dig into it. “You’re gonna need something to hold onto.” His lips danced across the deep bruise, teeth threatening it… and then he drifted away, and his teeth found a spot in the middle of my right pec, and he opened wide, looking up at me as  _ clamped _ his teeth together, bunching up the skin and muscle into his mouth, biting harder and harder and then tugging at it, and I held onto his ass for dear life, screaming his name. 

I was begging for something else now—“let go, Tyler, it hurts too much, please—“ He bit harder, and I squirmed, and that only hurt worse. “Please,” I begged, “oh, fuck, don’t anymore—“ He let go, and kissed the spot, sucking on it so electrically that I arched my back again. “That’s so good—Tyler, you’re killing me, baby…” 

“That’s the goal, babe,” Tyler said, and bit down in a new spot. He carried on, bad as ever, if not worse, spot after spot on my pecs subject to his teeth cramming the skin together, sinking in deep, tugging until the skin snapped back and I was hollering—grazing his teeth along bruises that were already pounding so they exploded in new pain, ripping through the muscle until I was on fire with every bite. When he let go was respite, but every bruise was a touch away from intense pleasure or screaming pain, and he was always so close to me with his lips that I never knew whether he would bite next or kiss. 

My shouts came more and more often; I tried to hold back, but all he had to do was brush my nipples with his fingers to make me shout his name, and a bite anywhere was enough to make me scream and squirm and make myself scream more. He seemed so  _ pleased _ when I begged him to stop, and those expressions, that dominance, his control of me made me throb with arousal and go light-headed, precum gradually striping his chest and his chin and his neck I shot it in rope after rope (some men are leakers, but Tyler and I are more like uncapped fire hydrants). 

All the while, as I endured this torture, he was sawing his beast back and forth between my legs, my thighs giving way as he wrapped them around his dick, and I could feel the heat, feel that he was loving what he was doing to me. We kissed more than once, as intensely as ever, part of me wanting to get revenge and part of me just wanting to lavish him—he was beautiful, and this was beautiful, and it distracted from the pain. 

But he always went back. The session lasted five minutes? Ten? He didn’t get tired of it, talking to me, talking into my chest, licking me and biting me, and my chest was black and blue, peppered with marks from his teeth, and I was squirming even when he  _ breathed  _ over me—and then his teeth were grazing my left areola and biting it until, at last, I snapped. While I screamed his name, begged him to stop because he was biting too deep, I started to struggle more and more, rocking on the bed as his teeth tugged, trying to escape them. He growled and hit harder, and I started pushing against his shoulders, and he wrapped his arms around my back, holding on for dear life as I started to kick and writhe and try to  _ escape. _

I managed to roll us both over, getting my feet against the bed and pushing upward to get out of his death grip, pushing his arms apart and hollering in determination as his teeth held onto my pec for dear life—and then I was free, stumbling back, panting desperately in the pain. I stood in front of the bed, looking down on his eager face. “Your shoulder’s fuckin’  _ mine! _ ” he cried, with the most boyish excitement that I almost melted for him right there— 

And then he jumped up and reached out toward me to grab me. “Now gimme back your pecs, babe, I’m not done hurting you—“ but I slipped to the side with a yelp, still engrossed in my fear, and he growled and came for me, and I circled him, but he lunged for me in the tight space and I had to climb up onto the bed to escape him. He batted for my legs to try and trip me over as I stood and he crawled up onto the bed after me, reaching with his head, opening his mouth, and clamping his teeth around my thigh. I stumbled and steadied myself against the wall, kicking as he bit, begging for him to let go, and then I shook him off, jumping off the bed and running for the door— 

And in a flash, he turned around, ran for me, and slammed me against the door, my chest hitting it with a thump and an explosion of pain, making me gasp and collapse to my knees. His hands went to my shoulders, I flinched, and he paused. “You need a break?” he asked, softly. 

“Just for a little bit,” I murmured, and he knelt down behind me on the carpeted floor, pressing his nose into my neck and then nuzzling the side of his head into the back of mine, resting there and sharing our warmth. 

He ran his arms up and down my torso, passing along it softly, not groping, just touching me, and I relished in it. I brushed his hands with mine, stroking his arms as he stroked my body, brushing my bruised chest so gently, so electrically, that I felt like, in that moment, I was in heaven. 

His lips met the back of my neck and began to suck. His fingers danced across the bruises in my pecs with little jolts of pleasure and teased my aching nipples until I couldn’t help but moan needily. He let go of my neck, surely, having left a hickey, and kissed around to the side of my neck, down toward my shoulder and onto it. He sucked on my left shoulder from behind and then grazed at it with his teeth, dragging his upper incisors against the skin. 

I knew that, right now, he still owned me. He owned my shoulder. He could have bitten without asking, all of a sudden, and knowing that, I felt tense, the beginnings of forgotten arousal flooding back into me—but at the same time, I knew, and it was so, so comforting to know, that he would ask. 

His lips came up to my ear, sucking on my earlobe, turning the ache there into bliss. He murmured into my ear. “May I claim my prize now, Josh?” 

I hesitated. No breath flowed over my hear. He was holding it. “ _ Please _ ,” I said, pressing my forehead into the wall. “I wanna be scared of your lips right now,” I said, more quietly. “Thrill me, Tyler. Make me hurt.” 

His hand on my chest closed a thumb and a finger around my nipple and squeezed, twisting the bruised skin. A low whine sounded from my throat and I pressed my forehead harder into the door, gritting my teeth. His other hand found my other pec, twisted the skin, began to tug, and I pounded my fist into the floor as I keened in pain, ‘mmph’s and ‘ngh’s, long and low, breaths growing harder. He wouldn’t let go. 

His lips returned to my shoulder; his teeth played with the skin, nipped it. It didn’t hurt, but I still yelped, and he chuckled low. He nipped again, moved his head to my other shoulder, and tugged hard on my nipples to make me yelp “Tyler!” cutely into the door. And then, without warning, he sunk his teeth into my shoulder, deeper and deeper, as I rocked ever so gently, repeating, “Tyler, Tyler,  _ Tyler, Tyler, TYLER!”  _ as he tore so deep, tugged so hard on my nipples _ , hurt  _ me—and then he let go all at once, sucking on my other earlobe utnil I moaned, hard coming down to stroke my rock-hard erection. 

“All week,” he said, and I shivered. “When my lips get close to your shoulder, what’ll it be? Tell me what I might do.” 

“You might kiss it,” I said, as he sucked on my ear. “You might lick it.” He nipped my ear and I winced. “You might nip it. Or suck it.” He bit my ear a little harder, and precum drooled from my cock, all over his hand, slowly soaking it. “Or bite it,” I acknowledged. “Or  _ chomp _ it,” I said, playfully. “You might hold on until everybody looks.” He dragged his tongue up my ear. “You might just sink your teeth in to hear my yelp.” He kissed his way down my neck. “You’ll scare me.” His lips found the bruise forming in my shoulder, and I felt a thrill. “You’ll thrill me.” He grazed the spot with his teeth and I squirmed. “You’ll  _ hurt _ me.” 

He bit me. He bit me until I shouted his name. 

There we knelt for minutes on end: Tyler lavishing me, talking to me dirty, using my pecs to play me like a fiddle, peppering my shoulders in bruises that I knew he would be exploiting all week. He marked my neck with hickey after hickey, covering me in dark splotches until I got red as a beet just thinking about them. 

“Hickeys are bruises,” he murmured, plaintively. 

“Yeah,” I said. “I know that. Why?” 

He paused, nibbling on my neck where he’d left a hickey, not biting. “Bruises are hickeys,” he said. 

“Not all of them are,” I said, hand reaching back to rub his thigh. 

“Mine are,” he said. “But that’s not the point.” 

“What is?” 

“These,” he said, and then he dug his upper incisors into my shoulder, leaving the bottom free while I clutched his thigh and gritted my teeth. “Just kidding. Just wait.” 

I waited while he chewed on one of the bruises in my shoulders, teeth sinking in again and again and making me yelp and wince. “You gave yourself to me, love—no,” he said, into my shoulder, biting me harder so that I gasped. “You gave yourself. I love you.” 

“No,” he said, again, and I looked up. “I love you, dummy, I’m just saying that line isn’t right.” 

“Line?” I asked, and counted the syllables in my head. “You’re writing me a hai—kuuuu!” I cried, as he  _ chomped _ my shoulder, biting the skin where neck met shoulder so hard, so fast that I wanted to bawl. I panted, instead, clutching his thigh again. 

_ Hickeys are bruises _ , he said. 

_ You gave yourself to me, love. _

_ Bruises are hickeys _ . 

“No,” he said. “I can do better.” 

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and he sucked on my shoulder where he’d just bitten it as I moaned in bliss. 

“I can do one more. Better wordplay.” I laughed genuinely, and then he smacked my right pec  _ hard _ with the flat of his hand, making it explode in pain. I doubled over and lay my forehead against the door, whining low. “Don’t make fun of a sadist while he’s trying to write you poetry,” he said, not darkly, but full of mirth, that palm kneading my pec harshly, fingers grinding into the muscle, dragging it in one direction and then the other, making me curse toward the ground. 

“Now you get to feel me torturing your chest until I finish the second haiku.” He poked his index finger into the muscle, harder and harder and harder as I groaned and shook, and finally he let go—but he went right back to groping it like an exercise ball. “Congratulations.” He kissed the back of my neck, and, true to his word, he used both hands to grope my pecs as I groaned and squirmed and sometimes shouted, but he didn’t seem to get tired of the torture, even while he murmured lines he was trying out. 

He let go of my pecs all at once and began to recite. 

_ You gave me your skin. _

_ Hickeys are bruises are bites. _

_ I’ll give you my love _ . 

“Thank you,” I murmured. “I’m glad I did it. It feels so good to give to you.” 

“Correction,” Tyler said. “It feels so bad.” 

“It feels so both,” I said, and we laughed. “Thanks for giving me your love.” 

“Thanks for giving me yours,” he said, kissing my jawline and then nibbling on it. “After so long. After I scared you so bad. After I hurt you in the wrong way. You still gave me your skin.” 

“Because I still love you,” I said. “I always did, I guess. And now I know I really do. ‘Cause I love you enough to trust you.” 

Tyler cooed into my jawline; he seemed to like that word, ‘trust’. He had said it earlier, when he was biting my earlobe, and it had done something to me. “Turn around, Josh; kiss me,” he said, passionately, huskily, and I turned around and kissed him, and we held each other’s sides just like that as we lavished each other’s mouths. We let go a few times to catch our breath and dove back in, more passionately each time, lips and tongue going further and deeper, hands running up and down each other's sides, finding each other's ass and balls and cock and smearing precum everywhere. 

At last, when his hands and mine were a mess, when we had fed each other our precum more than once and snowballed it, he wiped his hands off on my legs and stood up. “I gotta write down these haiku real quick. Josh, get on the bed lengthwise, stomach down, ass up. Gonna bite your butt and hump your back until I cum, and then I’ll be done. You’ll be free.” 

“Free,” I murmured. 

“No promises about my hands on your pecs though.” I groaned and he laughed. “Now go on, do it, and don’t look. I’ll mount those traps soon enough.” 

I crawled on to the bed like he said, getting on my chest, putting my ass up, pulling a pillow forward to bury my face into and eventually to put my chin on, and I waited patiently, listening to him as he tapped on his phone and scribbled on a piece of paper with that beautiful handwriting of his. I felt the bed depress to my side, a gentle squeak as he must have been shimmying around, and then I felt his warmth over me, and then something hard poking into my scalp through my hair, something hot and wet leaking through my dyed locks and matting them down. 

His cock rubbed back and forth, a thick rope of pre shooting from the end of it straight into my hair, matting a few square inches of it, and he laughed. “Don’t worry, way more of you is gonna be drenched than that.” The tip of his cock dragged across my hair, down the back of my head and then my neck, and at last it pressed into the middle of my upper back, precum streaming onto my skin. 

And then his teeth sank into my right asscheek and I screamed into the pillow. He  _ chewed _ on it like it was a piece of meat, in and out, in and out, deeper and longer into my muscular flesh every time until he just held on and tugged at it, white hot pain pounding through my ass as I squirmed and breathed desperately and finally shouted Tyler’s name before biting the pillow. He didn’t let go, grinding his cock into my back, thrusting hard, the whole length dragging along my increasingly slick back as he moaned into my cheek. 

He kept on biting and grinding, and I eventually lifted my chin up so I could breathe better, but that left me nothing to bite and only to shout while he bit me in spot after spot until I could feel every bruise aching, and then he would lick at them, suck at them, make me scream his name in pleasure like he’d done a hundred times already, and he did it for minutes on end, again and again, and I bore it with utter arousal, electric pleasure, burning pain, acceptance and submission and trust. 

“I’m about to cum,” he said, finally, into my cheeks, and I groaned in relief. He swatted my ass and I yelped loudly, all the bruises lighting back on fire. “You wanna stop that bad?” He made a big bite on one of my bruises and I jerked into the bed, mumbling ‘no, but yes’. “It’s high time. Fuck, Josh, wish I could’ve fucked you, but another day, I’m still so ready to cum all over you, baby. My little snowman. I’ve missed this.” 

“I’ve missed it too,” I admitted, lifting my back up into his thrusts as he ground harder and harder. “Cum for me, Tyler, baby, all over me, just like you’ve been waiting for, show me what you can  _ do _ ...” And, with a loud groan, he came, and I felt it—the first thick rope shooting into my back, heavy and splattering, making a thick line straight from my traps to the crack in my asscheeks. The next shots went wild, hitting my back hard on the left, the right, top and bottom, drenching my bruised butt surprisingly  _ pleasantly _ , until I felt utterly soaked and slick and sticky all at once. 

Then he was pulling back, cum shooting over my neck, down the arms I had at the side of my back until they, too, were coated from behind. He pulled back further, and I could feel it shooting hard into my hair, running down all the sides of it as it matted it more and more thickly, until my red hair must have been off-white or pink or something utterly obscene, and my bruised ears and neck were drenched in it. 

“Up,” he commanded, as he pulled back and sat on his ankles, wobbling and rocking back and forth as he stroked himself, and I sat up too, on my own ankles, dragging myself close to him as cum poured down my back and onto the bed. “Aim it,” he said, a little deliriously, and I grabbed the massive member and aimed it at my bruised chest, turning the black and blue pecs into snow-capped mountains, drenching my abs until they were six glaciers, covering my cock and balls and pubes and legs in his seed until I was thoroughly creamed. 

At last I pointed it at my face, shutting my eyes tight as he grabbed me by the back of my head and forced me down so his cock hit me point black, cum splattering in a wild mess all over my forehead and nose and eyelids and lips and cheeks. He pushed my lips against the tip of his cock and I opened them, letting him buck his hips to shove the thick tip halfway in, and I sucked on it as it blasted into my mouth, filling it so quickly I had to swallow it in gulp after gulp like I would water on a hot day, until it filled my cheeks and stuffed them despite my swallowing and leaked from my lips. 

I pulled back and he pushed me down, and then I gave a muffled noise of protest and—blessedly—he let go so I could pop off, the last heavy ropes of his cum shooting into my face. I felt it die down and I swallowed more of his cum, my mouth still stuffed with his seed, and at last I sat straight up, eyes closed, waiting for him to kiss me. 

He kissed me, and we shared his seed between our mouths until we separated and could do nothing but pant. He rubbed my eyes with surprisingly clean hands, and I opened them in the middle of my glazed face, looking at him with adoring eyes as he looked at me with the very same look—and we kissed one more time, one boy fair and clean and utterly satisfied, another boy drenched from top to bottom in white—and utterly satisfied. 

This was the way our first date should have ended, with this kiss, with this love, not with him ignoring me and all I wanted, not with him pumping and dumping, leaving with nothing but a haiku. This was the last thing I needed to rewrite the memories of that date, to turn them into something beautiful, something I wanted—this. To be here with him. I was where I was supposed to be, when I wanted to be there, and though everything ached, though I was hot and sweaty and sticky, I was happy. 


End file.
